Just days after he ordered Iran to strike last Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood outside Soroka Hospital in Bercheva and expressed his anger that the building had been attacked by an Iranian counter strike.
“Because they are criminal government, they target civilians. They are the world’s terrorists,” he said of the Iranian government.
Similar accusations were levelled by other Israeli leaders, including President Isaac Herzog and opposition leader Ia Rapid, during the conflict with Iran.
But what these leaders lacked is the perception that Israel itself has attacked almost every hospital in Gaza, where more than 56,000 people have been killed or the strip health care system has been pushed to a near-complete collapse.
It was evident in many Israeli reports regarding the attack on Bercheva Hospital, with little mention of similarities to Israel’s own attack on Gaza hospitals. Instead, Israel was unable to prove it, as many of the Israeli media support these attacks and either attempt to underestimate them or justify them by regularly claiming that Hamas Command Centre is under hospitals.
The suffering of weapons
According to an analyst who spoke to Al Jazeera, a media ecosystem exists in Israel, with a few exceptions, simultaneously strengthens the victims’ claims while protecting the Israeli masses as Israeli forces are caught up in Gaza, where Israeli people are suffering.
Israeli journalist Aid David Cohen, media correspondent for Harlettz, wrote this month, “reporters and editors from major Israeli press agencies have confirmed multiple times that, particularly in private conversations, employers do not allow them to present a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and to present the suffering of the population there.”
“The Israeli media doesn’t think they’ll educate the job. It’s about shaping and shaping the masses ready to support war and attacks,” journalist Orly Noy told Al Jazeera in West Jerusalem. “I really see it as having a special role in this.”
“I saw it [interviews with] People who lived near the area where Iranian missiles were hit said, “They were given plenty of space to talk about and explain the impact, but as soon as they began to criticise the war, they were closed quite rudely.”
The complaints filed last September by three Israeli civil society organisations against Channel 14, one of Israel’s most viewed television networks, cited 265 quotes from hosts who claimed they encouraged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide. Among them, the phrases regarding Gaza were “It needs to be completely wiped out” and “No one is innocent.”
A few months ago, in April, the channel was once again criticised in Israeli media. This time, no civilians and fighters were killed due to live counters labeled “terrorists we excluded,” media surveillance magazine 7th Eye pointed out.
Analysts and observers explained how Israeli media and politicians weaponized the horrors of Jewish past suffering and shaped them into the victims’ stories.
“It’s not just this war,” said Noi, editor of the Hebrew local call website. “The Israeli media is in the business of justifying every war and telling people that this war is essential to their existence. It’s an ecosystem. It’s absolutely right, no matter what. There’s no doubt. There’s no room for criticism from within.
“The world has allowed Israel to act as some sort of crazy bully to do what she wants whenever she wants,” Noi added. “They can send their troops to Syria and Lebanon. They don’t care about Gaza, they have immunity. Israel is fine. Israel is a bullet. Why don’t they think about it?
Israeli media acts primarily as a tool to manufacture consent to Israel’s actions against Palestinians and neighboring countries, enduring it from protecting Israeli masses from its victims.
There is an exception. Israeli titles such as Noi’s Local Call and +972 Magazine feature reports that are highly critical of Israel’s war with Gaza, and conducted a detailed investigation into Israeli actions that discovered scandals reported by international media a few months later. A joint report from Local Call and +972 Magazine revealed that Israeli forces are using AI systems to generate bombing target lists based on predicted civilian casualties. Another report found that Israeli forces mistakenly declared that they had evacuated the entire Gaza Strip, which led to the bombing of civilian homes in areas where they still lived.
A more famous example is the liberal daily Haretz, who regularly criticizes Israel’s actions in Gaza. Haretz faces a government boycott over reporting on war.
“It’s nothing new,” said Dina Matar, professor of political communication and Arab media at SOAS University in London. “The Israeli media has long been the case. [Israel] Do victims seek actions that allow them to present a larger victim? [such as attacking Iran]. They often use emotional language to describe strikes in Israeli hospitals that they never use to describe Israeli strikes in Gaza hospitals. ”
In December, please adopt Israeli media reports about the siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last remaining medical facility in northern Gaza.
The UN’s special rapporteur’s account of the attacks spoke at exits such as the YNET and Israeli era, about the “terror” of the Israeli media, but instead focuses mostly on the claims of the number of “terror” in Israeli military forces.
Among those seized from the hospital were medical staff, including Dr. Husam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan.
In contrast, reports of the Soroka Hospital attack in Bercheva, Israel framed the hit as a nearly universally “direct strike,” foregrounding the experiences of evacuated patients and healthcare workers.
In this environment, he said that Israel’s representation as home to Netanyahu’s “conquered people” reinforced the view that Israelis have long been encouraged to retain themselves, even amid decades of occupation of Palestinian land.
“I don’t question what Netanyahu is saying, because the meaning of his speech makes sense as part of this larger historical story. [narrative]the suffering of Nakba and Gaza, etc.,” the Academic said.
