It is Tuesday morning in Israel. The day before, the main tool for analyzing food security and nutrition (Integrated Phase Classification, in which UN organizations participate) revealed that half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people suffer from extreme lack of access to food and that famine in the north is “imminent.” In the rest of the world, the news is receiving considerable attention. Here, the numerous news programs and current affairs talk shows, which run from morning to late in the day, almost completely ignore it. Instead of images of desperate Palestinians queuing for food, Israelis are given advice on how to deal with the famine. emotional hungerwhere to buy the best Haman’s ears – a typical sweet during the Jewish holiday of Purim – or MasterChef adverts.
As in most countries, television is the main source of information in Israel. Almost half of the population choose it, according to official statistics. In times of war, like this one, audiences soar (it is difficult to describe the national attachment to current events and Telegram news groups) and programs add the flag and special messages. “Israel at war” reads Channel 12; “Strong together” (Channel 13); “With God’s help, together we will win” (Channel 14).
A random day was chosen to watch 10 consecutive hours of news and talk shows on the main Hebrew-language channels: the public channel (Kaan, 11) and the private channels 12, 13 and 14. Channel 12 is the clear leader in news viewers, while channels 14 (the right’s favourite) and 13 are competing for second place (6.9% and 6.5% respectively). Kaan, which gives the most space to images of Gaza recorded by Palestinians, is in last place (4.8%), according to the latest data released on Thursday.
Some of its journalists publish high-value scoops on domestic politics and diplomacy, and closely monitor Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. But the general tone at times like this – and particularly after the trauma of the October 7 attack – has three common elements: Palestinians are ignored or dehumanized, the army is sacrosanct, and Israel lives surrounded by countries that hate it or do not understand it. These are trends that already existed and are now being taken to the extreme.
“Anti-Semitic criticism”
On Channel 12, the most watched channel, a group of experts and commentators comment on the statement made the day before by the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, that Israel is using hunger in Gaza as a “weapon of war”. “It is an almost anti-Semitic position,” says one commentator. “Absolutely,” replies the presenter. “Borrell and (UN Secretary General António) Guterres must be told that they do not understand anything, that it is Hamas that is using hunger as a weapon of war,” argues Harel Horev, historian and researcher of Palestinian affairs at the Moshe Dayan Centre.
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The discussion reviews how television stations around the world are reporting on the raid on the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza. To analyse it, they bring in Jonathan Conricus, now a researcher and a few weeks ago the army spokesman who accompanied the media to the hospital after the first raid last November. He claims that the international media are in a “campaign against Israel” and the journalists in Gaza, dominated by Hamas. Then they give way to Alon Mizrahi, a volunteer hairdresser who cut the hair of a soldier who died in the Strip, to remember their last encounter.
“It is frustrating that we are not convincing the Western world of what distinguishes us from a terrorist organisation that uses medical means and the population as a human shield,” laments the presenter of a talk show on public television. A commentator explains the problem: “We explain things rationally to Europe, but there are many emotions because they see the Palestinians as the weaker party.” Marko Moreno, a former military man who had appeared hours earlier on another channel, insists on this idea: “We do not speak Arabic.” “There are millions of refugees in Syria or Iraq, but only where Jews are involved do (Joe) Biden, (Antony) Blinken (US Secretary of State) and Falusis speak of humanitarian issues,” says former minister Bar-On, referring to Democratic MP Nancy Pelosi, mispronouncing her name. In Hebrew, both p and f, o and u are written with the same letter.
When it comes to Al Shifa, there is only one version and some images: those disseminated by the Israeli army spokesperson. All those “eliminated” are “terrorists” and the debate revolves more around the success of communication that this has had in relation to the previous raid or whether to demolish the building.
There are hardly any Palestinians who are not armed, hooded, identified by the army as members of armed organisations or en masse waving flags. Channel 14 proudly shows them detained with their eyes covered and their hands tied behind their backs. This is, they say, the fruit of intelligence gathering.
Bombings are often illustrated by the sterile aerial shots – without blood or corpses – provided by the Armed Forces. Televisions connect with soldiers deployed on the ground, who add a human touch by greeting their families. “How wonderful it is to see our soldiers on the front in this cold,” says a presenter, looking out at the snow in the background of the Golan Heights.
Them or us
The subtext is a widespread idea in Israel, especially since Hamas killed more than 1,200 people (mostly civilians) and took more than 240 hostages on October 7. It is either “them” or “us.” The “them” is often unclear or refers to all Palestinians. Moshe Pesel, an MK from Netanyahu’s Likud party, puts it in a link from the Knesset, the national parliament: “History repeats itself. All Zionist parties are faced with a situation where they are trying to exterminate the Jewish people, like 70 years ago. It is our history, generation after generation,” he says. Or, as Tratman laments: “It is in their DNA to eliminate the Jewish people, it cannot be changed.”
“What can we do as a country that wants to remain part of the Western world and continue our just war?” asks a presenter. Pnina Sharvit Baruj, a researcher at the think tank The National Institute for Security Studies responds: “We have to take into account what matters to the Americans and show that there is no real starvation (in Gaza), to allow us more freedom of operation.” The sanctions against the settlers approved by the European Union have a positive side because they “allow them to show that they are doing something without harming our ability to fight.”
The themes and debates revolve around similar themes: Hamas steals humanitarian aid, but the world blames Israel, creating an image problem. “Not only Eurovision, the anti-Israeli campaign continues,” reports Channel 12, speaking of an initiative to expel the country’s clubs from UEFA football competitions for the invasion of Gaza. A video provided by the army proves that the Lebanese militia Hezbollah uses ambulances for its operations. In Al Shifa, soldiers found an envelope in a safe with money – “even with blessings,” one commentator said indignantly – which ended up being interpreted as funding for Hamas, when it was marked in Arabic as a gift from the Islamist movement (which has governed the Strip since 2007) to the hospital.
The language is very revealing. On the public channel, they preface the news of the death in combat of a soldier with the phrase: “The war in Gaza continues to claim victims.” Entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble show the “strength” of the army. In the talks for a second ceasefire taking place in Qatar, the Israelis present “proposals” or resort to negotiating strategies. Anat Hochberg-Marom, an expert in international security and geopolitical crises, calls the threat of invading Rafah a “pressure tool” on Channel 12 and defends “military pressure” to “move the negotiations forward.” Hamas, on the other hand, engages in “manipulations.” “We take our Europeanness and Westernness to try to understand what is going on in their heads. But they are jihadists,” argues Tratman. “If they kill their people, how can they care about the hostages?”
Israel is generally “us” and the soldiers, “our forces.” The Palestinians, “them.” “We will continue to accompany our soldiers, heroes and loved ones,” says a Channel 14 presenter before giving way to commercials. Our cut to a soldier praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, with the phrase: “With God’s help, together we will win.”
Only Jewish voices
Except for a few isolated cases, only Jews speak out. The criticism is not usually about substance, but about opposition to Netanyahu, unfinished business or electoral strategies. It is more focused on the budget, the relationship with the United States or the day after the war. Yair Golan, the reserve commander-general and former deputy minister of the economy for the left-wing pacifist party Meretz who now aspires to lead the Labour Party, supports the invasion of Rafah (which the international community fears will lead to a new tragedy) because the “professional” – that is, military – assessment of its necessity is “very clear”. On Channel 14, a commentator advocates “going into Rafah and destroying the hospitals”.
Simplistic explanations or those based on the assumption that Israel seeks peace (but is forced to fight) and the Arabs seek war, unless they are “deterred” by the brutality of the potential response, also prevail. Israel’s support for an escalation on its border with Lebanon is interpreted as a show of strength. An economic commentator, Shmuel Almas, points out on Channel 14 that the “only reason” Hezbollah does not respond with open conflict is because the collapsed Lebanese economy could not cope with such destruction.
Lawyer Rawyah Handaklo hosts a programme against crime in her Arab-Israeli community and speaks on the subject on public radio and television. There have been 41 murders so far this year. The presenter asks her about the “responsibility of the Arab population”. “Sometimes I get annoyed by this question,” Handaklo admits. Years ago, Jewish-led mobs would kill each other in the streets of Israel and no one asked about the “responsibility” of the Jewish majority in the crime.
On Channel 14, racism, feelings of superiority over Palestinians and dehumanising discourse are constantly on display in debates, which contain all the elements of right-wing populism: criticism of political correctness, the left and feminism. Also the idea that there is a deep state that is opposed to the will of the people. The presenter introduces images of bombings in Gaza with the phrase: “We are cheered up a bit by the explosions and gunfire.” The video is set to a rap-pop song by two famous right-wing extremists (Subliminal and La sombra) with phrases such as “Good morning, Gaza; another dead Nazi;” or “I am not a cowardly little Jew with shaky knees, I am a Jew with firepower, smoke and words.”
The festival is about the issue of “nationalist rapes”. “According to the feminist left, rapes were caused by toxic masculinity, patriarchy or because men don’t put the toilet seat down (…) And no, we haven’t been fighting for the status of women here for 120 years (the first steps of Zionism),” says the presenter. The police figures, according to which only nine out of 500 rapes by Palestinians of Jewish women have a political element, are false. The problem is that “Mohammed raped a girl” and this is a “religious war” to which the country has opened its eyes following the sexual violence on October 7. “What the anti-Semites are doing to us now at the UN, left-wing organisations did to us before,” argues Alhanan Groner, of the ultra-nationalist newspaper Hakol Hayehudi. The presenter provocatively points out: “There will be people who say: ‘What a racist debate!’”
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