There are some 4,000 foreign reporters accredited in Israel to cover the war. They stay in luxury hotels. They go on dog and pony shows orchestrated by the Israeli military. They can, on rare occasions, be escorted by Israeli soldiers on lightning visits to Gaza, where they are shown alleged weapons caches or tunnels the military says are used by Hamas. They dutifully attend daily press conferences. They are given off-the-record briefings by senior Israeli officials who feed them information that often turns out to be untrue.
I’m quoting from The Chris Hedges Report on Substack. I have no expertise or particular knowledge of how this works, but I do know that when it comes to anything climate change and the various associated conferences that can involved tens of thousands of people, it is much the same. Reporters are flown in, put up at luxury hotels, attend banquets and given press releases that contain information that is mostly untrue.
Then there are those who attempt to find out what is really going on. When it comes to climate change issues, we are mostly just ignored and there is no war zone as such. But I’m sorry for the eleven journalists killed in Lebanon over the last few weeks, I would think at least some of them were attempting to report the facts, on a subject they know something about. I know there are always a few, across generations, across cultures who will put themselves in harms way because they need to speak truth to power.
According to Hedges:
Israel bombed a building on Friday in southern Lebanon housing seven media organizations, killing three journalists from Al Mayadeen and Al Manar and injuring 15 others. Since Oct. 7, Israel has killed 11 journalists in Lebanon.
Al Jazeera cameraman Fadi al-Wahidi, who was shot in the neck in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza by an Israeli sniper earlier this month, is in a coma. Israel has refused permission for him to seek medical care outside of Gaza. Like most of the targeted journalists, including his murdered colleague Shireen Abu Akleh, he was wearing a helmet and flak jacket that identified him as press.
The Israeli military has branded as “terrorists” six Palestinian journalists in Gaza who work for Al Jazeera.
“These 6 Palestinians are among the last journalists surviving Israel’s onslaught in Gaza,” United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, said. “Declaring them ‘terrorists’ sounds like a death sentence.”
The scale and savagery of the Israeli assault on the media is unlike anything I witnessed during my two decades as a war correspondent, including in Sarajevo where Serb snipers regularly took aim at reporters. Twenty-three journalists were killed in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Yugoslav Wars between 1991 and 1995. Twenty-two were killed when I covered the war in El Salvador. Sixty-eight journalists were killed in World War II and 63were killed in Vietnam. But unlike in Gaza, Bosnia and El Salvador, journalists were usually not targeted.
Israel’s assault on press freedom is unlike anything we have experienced since William Howard Russell, the godfather of modern war reporting, sent back dispatches from the Crimean War. Its onslaught against journalists is in a category by itself.
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I have no way of verifying any of the information provided in this article, and I have no way of verifying the photograph featured at the top of this post and credited to Mohammed Al-Zaatari.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Which of the combatants are the least morally reprehensible?
I understand the Arab side play the Western Media like a fine machine. Palestinians refugees were kept in camps way too long to curry sympathy
This is a really poor post. You know exactly what you’re doing. I’m unsubscribing. Shameful.
“Churnalists” have, in general, self-identified as “opinion-shapers” for decades, now.
There is a VERY GOOD reason that no proper military allows them anywhere near the “pointy end” and prohibits their troops from talking to them.
Union General William Thecumseh Sherman had this to say on the subject:
“I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all, there would be news from Hell before breakfast.”
Jenn, this is way outside of your sphere of understanding, you should keep quiet.
Are you confused about “War Correspondences” and “War correspondents”?
If you do not have an opinion/argument/point of view, on everything that happens on this planet – you have no right to be on this planet.
IT’S A TERRIBLE WAR as all wars are, but never have the violent tactics of HAMAS been equaled by any other enemy, using civilians as human shields. And never before have we had such a ‘woke’ western population brainwashed so thoroughly. Political islam is a menace and only Islam can correct it. Yesterday I read an account of the Armenian Genocide. It was an unholy eradication of prosperous Ottoman Christians by ‘poor me’ jealous Ottoman Turks. It was written by a Muslim who cried out for Muslim’s leaders to correct it. I know what to believe. History is a horror show. Wild animals behave better than some humans.
Jennifer, you are correct that the media is often used as propaganda, especially so in warfare. The death toll in the Middle East war is tragic, but the media rarely explains that Iran is the main sponsor, and that Israel did NOT start this war. At dawn on 7 October 2023, Hamas invaded Israel and brutally murdered young people at a music festival and sadistically attacked Israeli families in their homes. Hamas raped and tortured young women, parading them through cheering crowds in Gaza, and have now held captive over 230 hostages, including women and children, even babies, for over a year. Many of these hostages have been killed or are likely dead. These are known facts, supported by actul camera footage from captured Hamas terrorists and IDF forensic reports, shared with Western media as a means of proving these sickening events. Even so, there are “useful idiots” who deny this evidence, including pro-Palestinian activists in our country who refuse to examine this evidence, and who encourage anti-Semitism and violence. Their aim is to destroy social cohesion in our nation. This anti-Semitism seems to be occuring at a global level.
Similarly, there has been a global fear campaign about climate change, or rather climate extinction, due to our use of fossil fuels. None of the scaremongering, ie rising seas, extreme weather, record rise in global temperature, dying coral reefs, etc, has actually been proven. But bias in reporting continues, and personal attacks on your ( and other’s) work in maintaining integrity in science, also continues. This is a global shame and the reason why you must continue to fight for truth in science. You are a hero in my book.
It was Churchill and his ‘mates’ who arbitrarily redrew the borders of the Middle East, to suit themselves.
‘The English are like the little bird, they shit and leave….’
The Sykes–Picot Agreement was a 1916 secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from Russia and Italy, to define their mutually agreed carve out after the Arab Rebellion that drove out the Turks.
“Seven Pillars of Wisdom” – TE Lawrence.
Menzies; “I did but see her passing by – and I will love her ’til I die”….
Yes, of course you can test your atom bombs in South Australia….
This is a tough, heartbreaking issue. The war, started by Iran through its puppets Hamas, was designed to kill as many Jewish non-combatants as possible. And as Hamas leaders cynically admitted, as many Gazans as possible as well. The role of pro-Hamas journalists has been documented to include active participation as combatants while dressed as journalists. Pro-Hamas journalists have at the least also promoted visual images and stories of Gazan civilian deaths and injuries that later proved to be fabrications. The bottom line is that Hamas decided to start a war, refused to protect their civilians, used civilians as shields, and now uses the tragic results to further stretch out a war they lost a long time ago. The journalists who have helped continue this war by deceitful reporting on behalf of Iran and Hamas and even directly assisting Hamas have put themselves in harm’s way. They decreased the level of honest information and increased suffering and death.
Agreed, and it’s the responibility of Islam’s religious leaders to expunge the antisemitism of the Koran and lead Islam to peace. It’s only their response that can bring peace.
The “Holy Handbook” is extremely unlikely to be “expunged / toned don” at any time soon.
The whole idea is ,in fact, foolish.
“Islam” LITERALLY means “BUBMISSION; a “Muslim” is one who has “sbmitted”
It is “an offer you cannot refuse”.
“Submit and convert”
Become a slave, or
DIE”.
There is probably a good reason that “la Cosa Nostra” , from Sicily, adopted this as “SOP after the moorish occupation of Sicily.
Islam is a political doctrine of conquest, unlike most “real” religions.
Most folk choose to deny or ignore this.
Maybe it is foolish but I think that there is a silent majority of Muslims that are hurt by political Islam and know things must change. Removing anti-semitism from the Koran has started, but is a dangerous endeavour. These sea changes take time and wisdom.
I’d like to take this forward on another venue and let Jennifer carry on her good swim on the reef.
Jennifer, your post has managed to dredge up some of the worst of Australian opinion, which is not difficult to achieve in this country where the media is completely dominated by American/Western ideologies whose bias is clear for all to see.
The origins of this conflict go back more than 100 years to the time of WWI and the Balfour Declaration issued by Britain. The declaration was meant to ensure that the land adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan was to provide a safe homeland for all peoples including non-Jewish communities in Palestine.
It’s a long and ugly story but this has never, never happened and for the last 75 years the Palestinians have been systematically dispossessed of their land to the point where today they are confined to a space of land about 40km x 10km adj to the sea and fenced in by 4m high fencing.
And so they attempted on October 7th to break-out and yes a lot of Israelis were killed.
But the response by Israel has been extreme by any measure and since that time they have mercilessly bombed Gaza and killed many 10’s of thousands of Palestinians including innocent women and children.
In my opinion and that of the UN this can only be described as a genocide.
It’s not a war, it’s a genocide.
And the nations of the West have stood by and supplied Israel with planes and missiles and 2000lb American bombs to carry out these horrors.
I am sorry to have ti say this, but I am ashamed to call myself Australian . .
There is much, much more that I could say, but I think you understand my feelings.
This is one of the most well written science-focused sites on the internet.