Dear All,

fter the October 7 Hamas attack on a kibbutz in Israel-occupied territory near the Gaza border, the war in the Middle East is the story that dominates the media. And, as Israel and Palestinians compete fiercely to define how this reporting should be framed, the words used in the coverage can be seen as a key part of the war.

Of the two narratives, the Israeli one has prevailed over the past few decades. The media has tended to parrot the Israeli position and insist on Israel’s ‘right to defend itself.’ But following the Hamas attack, the Palestinian narrative has also been heard in the mainstream media. And despite the indoctrinated tone of most TV news anchors, the Palestinians have managed to have their say, point out the media bias and outline their position articulately.

After the attack, TV reporters’ standard questions to any Palestinian or anybody ever having expressed sympathy for the plight of Gazans was, “Do you condemn the Hamas attack and the killing of civilians?” And all they wanted was a yes or no answer. But when it was pointed out to them, the same question was never put aggressively to Israeli officials or Israelis every time Gaza was bombed or attacked, or civilians were killed by the IDF; the response from many anchors/ reporters simply echoed the Israeli perspective.

When challenged on why they were not answering the question directly, a few Palestinian interviewees responded, “You’re asking the wrong question.” The Palestinian ambassador to Britain, Husam Zomlot, was one of these and responded to Sky News saying the Western media’s “obsession with blaming the victims, condemning the occupied, the colonised, the besieged” was “morally abhorrent.” He pointed out the rather surreal framing of their story, citing the headline ‘Israel under siege’ (whereas, of course, it’s the Gazans who have been under siege for decades). The Palestinian envoy spoke of the demonisation and dehumanisation of Gazans. He questioned if the interviewer would ask Israeli officials to condemn Israeli violence in Jerusalem or Gaza or the West Bank, and he said the media should stop doing this as there is “no symmetry between the occupied and the occupier, the colonised and the coloniser.” Everything that he pointed out illustrated this sort of topsy-turvy news treatment of information and how a total disregard for historical fact or context is what has come to characterise media coverage of this conflict. The line of questioning when he appeared on the BBC was broadly the same.

Mark Austin of Sky News later did an interview with a Hamas official in which he was astounded by the man refusing to condemn the killing of civilians in the Hamas assault. But the point the Hamas man was making – and which Austin refused to consider or discuss – was that armed settlers did not qualify as ‘civilians.’ This was an interesting distinction, albeit one that the interviewer didn’t engage with, that Israeli armed settlers were there illegally (as per international law). ‘Armed settlers’ doesn’t sound so threatening if you haven’t seen some of the videos of settler militias in illegal settlements, but these show heavily armed vigilantes, a militant ‘neighbourhood watch’ group who seems to delight in humiliating and harassing Palestinians.

International law and the demonisation of the victims were two themes that were elaborated upon in various other interviews as well. Depicting Israel as being under siege was one unfortunate example. As Zomlot pointed out, “It is the Palestinians who have been under siege for sixteen years.” Palestinian officials were at pains to point out that Palestinians have been largely compliant with Peace Process agreements and international law, whereas the Israelis have violated all accords and all international legality.

The extent of disinformation circulated in this propaganda war is evident in the rumours surrounding the Saturday raid. Hamas killed hundreds of people and took hostages, but there is still no evidence that there were any beheadings. Yet this allegation continues to be circulated on social media and is even repeated, as if it were fact, by Israelis being interviewed on TV. A similar rumour was that Hamas fighters were seen transporting a young female hostage who was naked. Again, there was no confirmation or corroboration of this. But these sorts of allegations and rumours reinforce the sense of Palestinians being brutal savages.

Israel’s defence minister reinforced this idea of the savage Palestinian. Following the Hamas attack, Yoav Gallant announced a complete siege of Gaza, called for more destruction in addition to the massive airstrikes Israel had launched and seemed to justify all this by saying, “We are fighting human animals”; the words of war, which imply that Palestinians are somehow sub-human. These are words that journalists in the British media have not challenged or questioned.

Another point some Palestinian interviewees were able to make this time around was that they had a right to fight for their freedom, to try to rid their homeland of the occupiers. They said that they had “a right to armed resistance” and were fighting against “occupation and subjugation.” But nobody wanted to discuss the issue of the legitimacy of an armed resistance struggle in the Palestinian context. After all, the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 might have come up: 91 people were killed and this was the deadliest attack directed against the British during that era (a future PM of Israel, Menachem Begin, was one of the perpetrators)

Despite the asymmetric nature of the struggle, Western governments continue to stand staunchly by Israel even as its army pummels the civilian population besieged in Gaza. The international show of solidarity with Israel was immediate and propagandistic, with the Israeli flag projected on government buildings in major Western capitals.

It is a terrible situation. After all this ends, perhaps Gaza will have been wiped out, the local population either dead or herded into some other Arab country, which might be just what the US and Israel would like.

Meanwhile, the words of war continue. This is a good moment in time to go back and study the history of the region and for any sane journalists to read Robert Fisk’s work on this.

Best wishes,

Umber Khairi