Claire - thanks for pushing back on the narrative and the idea that active journalism is just taking things at face value.
However I do take issue with one part of your article - unfortunately due to your reportage I have now been exposed to the nonsense that is Owen Jones and I cannot un-know it.
Because once a narrative is set it has its own momentum, it takes effort to change it. Disproving something usually isn't as click baity as an overstated accusation.
That's why, imo, both sides in this conflict are so promiscuously accusatory. Throw enough muck and some will stick, never mind if some nerds then spend months trying to figure out whether Israel bombed al Ahli hospital or not, or whether there were 40 beheaded babies or not, or whether (our current cycle) Hamas undertook systematic sexual violence on 7 October or not...
To also consider: my impression is that people following this conflict trend partisan - there are not many genuinely neutral observers. So whatever we hear that supports our biases (Israel is a racist colonialist state founded with war crimes and ethnic cleansing, Palestinians are Khamas are congenitally murderous antisemites who live only to kill innocent Jews) shores those biases up, even if it's later disproved. It's not like any of our views are completely dependent on facts and logic, or that any of us is eager to lean into the cognitive dissonance in order to emerge more enlightened beings.
In short: even when they lie about easily disprovable things they do it to achieve an objective. And it's hard to fault them professionally, the method seems to work.
Maybe. But the world you're describing is one in which no one gives a damn about what's true, including the journalists, and I can't fully bring myself to accept that we're living in that world.
Clearly not 'no one' but a critical mass of people (based on my subjective assessment of the sewer that is my twitter feed). Or even worse, at some level they persuade themselves a lie is true.
Claire; during this very war an IDF Colonel stood in front of an empty calendar and claimed that it contains names of guards assigned to guard hostages in a hospital basement.
Anyone speaking Arabic can see that the man was pointing at the day of the week on an otherwise empty calendar. The IDF has been lying about easily disproved things constantly this war. If you don't see that yet, I urge you to reconsider your biases. An article wondering out loud if the UN has more reason to lie than an actual combatant in the war (which is what COGAT is) is wild to me.
Exhibit B: The Israeli government getting Western nations to defund the UNRWA because it's apparently a terrorist group. Canada reversed that decision recently, Australia next. Their reversal speaks louder than them going along with the funding freeze. Norway's FM predicted prior to the first reversal that she expects countries to backtrack. (Diplomatic for: Israel lied).
Edit: An observer likened Israeli propaganda to Russian propaganda and I 100% agree. Both lie about easily disproved things; the point is to make the consumer distrust everything not coming from Israel/Russia which is exactly what happens here when we put the UN and COGAT on equal ground.
See my comment below: https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/whats-really-going-on-with-aid-deliveries/comment/51769896. Emmanuel, I've worked for the UN, and my sister's a UN peacekeeper. I've seen them lie *plenty* when they think it's in their interest. The UN is just notorious when it comes to Israel. Between 2015 and 2022, the General Assembly adopted 140 resolutions criticizing Israel for every wrongdoing imaginable. Over the same period, it passed 68 resolutions against *all other countries combined*--that's to say, including Iran, Eritrea, Russia, Myanmar, China, Syria, Uzbekistan, North Korea, Sudan, Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, and every other country in the world. This is not the behavior of an entity whose word is manifestly more credible than a combatant.
The evidence that UNRWA employees were involved in October 7 looks pretty strong to me. It's based on footage captured during the attacks, phone intercepts, signal intelligence, cellphone tracking data, interrogations of captured Hamaniks, and documents recovered from dead militants. Decisions about defunding and refunding the agency are being made on the basis of politics, to some extent, not that evidence, but mostly in light of there being no other distribution system for aid, which Canada might not have fully realized. Why would you be doubt, a priori, that this could be true? Have you ever seen the textbooks they use in UNRWA schools? Read this and tell me if you still find the idea that terrorists might be among UNRWA employees completely implausible: https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/UNRWA-Education-Textbooks-and-Terror-Nov-2023.pdf . (This is why the UK and the EU pulled funding for those textbooks.)
I haven't seen the video you mention, of the IDF Colonel and the calendar.
I've had some contact with the IDF as a journalist; I did not *at all* sense that they operate the way Russia does. They're often bad at PR, as we discuss in the podcast, and sometimes they don't bother at all--there's a sense in Israel that it's a waste of time even to try to explain their point of view because everyone's going to call them monsters them no matter what they do. I understand why they feel that way, but it doesn't excuse not trying--it's not true that the whole world is implacably hostile to Israel, and even among those who are, minds can change.
I've asked the IDF a lot of questions about controversial issues, especially after the Mavi Marmara incident. (I was working on a documentary about it; you can see some of the footage we never used here: https://murkyinturkey.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/a-day-at-the-ihh-the-jewish-people-are-dying-because-of-your-shrewd-questioning/) I never felt (or discovered) that they were lying to me. I *did* feel that they didn't make enough of an effort to answer my questions. They often said they'd get back to me, but never did. I doubt they were deliberately stonewalling me. I think they just figured I just wasn't important or connected enough to be worth their time. This is an example of what I mean when I say they're bad at PR: If you have a journalist in front of you who knows the Turkish side of that story inside and out and *isn't hostile to Israel,* you should make time for her. Yes, time and resources are scarce, but if I'd been them, I would have.
Fair enough. I’m not saying the UN doesn’t lie either; as a Lebanese their behavior on the Syrian file has been appalling. As a physician; their behavior on CoVID has been criminal.
We can agree to disagree on whether Israel is saying the truth; but I also feel I have some knowledge given I intimately know what happened in Lebanon. The infamous Dahieh Doctrine is, after all, named after my nation.
As for the IDF colonel and the calendar; only France 24 and NBC mention it from a google search:
I so wish you'd joined us for our discussion of Lebanon. We talked quite a bit about Israel's invasion(s), but there's nothing like hearing it from someone who lived it. (Although--are you old enough to remember the invasion(s) in the 1980s? Probably not, right?) But you've been surrounded by people who lived through it, and that matters.
On the calendar, I'm confused. In the video, he points to the calendar and says, "We are in an operation." He points to the top of the calendar, which does indeed (from what I understand) say, "Operation al Aqsa mosque." He doesn't say that below are the names of the terrorists. In the first video, he points to the same part of the calendar and shows that it refers to the Operation on October, 7, then says "This is a guard list where every terrorist writes his name, and has his own shift, guarding the people that were here."
"Beneath the Rantisi Hospital in Gaza, IDF forces found a room where Israeli hostages are believed to have been held. The calendar found in the room marked the days since October 7 Massacre with the title “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”, Hamas’ name for their horrific attack on Israel."
The "list of names" idea appears to have taken off on Twitter, with people writing things like "Those are dead men walking," and such. Arabic speakers of course found this funny, because on the list were days of the week, not names. I think the *responses* to this are why France24 thought the idea that they'd found the names of the terrorists in that room was worth debunking.
But I don't see this as some huge, important lie, do you? It *does* say, "October 7 al Aqsa Flood operation" at the top, and the days since October 7 are crossed off, as they would be if people were completing shifts. In the context of everything else they found (RPGs? Grenades? Suicide vests?), it seems to me plausible to conclude that it's a schedule for guarding the captives, or at the least, to think they said this in good faith. It's not evidence that on its own could be used to convict someone in a court of law, but it's a reasonable guess. He may have meant to say, "This is a guardian list where every terrorist crosses off his shift, guarding the people that were here."
The point they were trying to make is that this room is connected to Hamas and not something you'd usually see under a hospital. I don't see this as a significant and deliberate lie, do you? It seems as if he misspoke--pretty common if English isn't your first language, you're under a massive amount of stress, and you're not thinking too closely about it. I'm sure he thought that the key point was that they'd found a sign of the hostages. If they really wanted to lie about what they found, they could plant evidence.
I find bad faith in the NBC article, though--not France24's or the Telegraph's, just NBC's. It's dripping with scorn, saying it's just "an Arabic calendar" but doesn't say what's written on top of it. That's a lie by omission. Readers can't understand the story if they don't know that. (I'm much harder on journalists who lie than I am on soldiers. We're not under that kind of. stress, and we have lots of time to think about what we're saying.)
As for whether those curtains are evidence that hostage videos have been filmed there, no one--not the IDF, not the journalists--mentions whether these curtains have, in fact, been seen in a hostage video. That would be dispositive. And again, the NBC article doesn't mention the RPGs, grenades, etc. right by the curtains. Actually, the NBC article is appalling. All insinuation, no accurate reporting.
As for using the video to justify bombing a hospital--that's obviously the most horrifying aspect of the war. There's a huge amount of evidence that Hamas uses civilian facilities like hospitals as weapons depots, tunnel entrances, and rocket launching sites--which is a war crime--but does that justify bombing them?
If Israelis say, "hospitals are off limits," Hamas will hide in the hospitals. That means they can slaughter as many Israelis as they like, as often as they like, so long as they hide in hospitals afterward. Obviously, no Israeli leader would survive a minute if he said, "We can't protect you from terrorism because the terrorists are behaving like terrorists."
The only alternative to bombing hospitals (or any place Hamas hides) is living with Hamas, and that's not compatible with Israeli survival. Hamas says it will do what it did on October 7 over and over again, each time, effectively, shrinking the size of Israel.
I realize that I'm defending the decision to bomb a hospital, which is never a position you want to be in. But I can't figure out a way out of this dilemma--can you?
After the war, there will be investigations of all of these decisions. We'll understand a lot more about how these targets were chosen and how significant they were to Hamas's operations. My guess is that some of these decisions will prove to have been unjustifiable, but others will prove justifiable (at least, under the laws of war) There's probably no better option available to Israelis, save saying, "Fuck it, I'd rather live with Hamas next door and take my chances than kill kids in hospitals," which is what I think I'd say. I simply can't imagine giving the order to bomb a hospital, or doing it--and I pity the guys who were ordered to do it, because it will haunt them forever.
But you can't say "fuck it" if you're an elected leader--and no one with kids would ever say it. I can say that I'd choose, for myself, to be killed by Hamas before I'd bomb a hospital. But no one would ever tolerate that for their kids. Especially after you've seen the videos of what Hamas does to kids.
An important clarification: Israel didn't bomb this hospital. They destroyed a tunnel near the hospital.
A second point worth noting: Israel said it had separate intelligence confirming that hostages were being held there. That's why they were there in the first place.
The reason I become so exercised about the tone of the Times' coverage can be seen in the comments. Here are the first two:
Ed: "Israel is blocking the delivery of food to starving Gazans. This is obvious. This is intentional policy. Stop the nonsense that it is an accidental or circumstantial outcome. It very clearly is not. The United States is being enormously damaged as regards its credibility on the world stage each day it tolerates these Israeli lies."
Jacques: :It’s difficult to find printable words to describe the deliberate starvation of millions of people. Only one nation can make relief truly effective and yet it’s patently not doing it. The stated Israeli aim - the unattainable total destruction of Hamas - does not explain, excuse or justify this abomination."
Most people get all of their news about Israel from media outlets like the Times. It's hard to blame these readers for coming to this conclusion since the Times has gone to such remarkable lengths to suggest it. (I blame them anyway: They're idiots.)
You're in Israel, right? How is this being reported in the Hebrew-language press? I'm really puzzled--I don't want to come out with guns blazing and insist this stuff about Israel refusing to allow trucks in is a baldfaced lie: I have no evidence of this. But something about this doesn't add up: I can't see why either the aid agencies or COGAT would lie about something that can be so easily verified--this isn't a subjective thing, this is an empirical, observable fact, and it's taking place in a country where the ratio of news cameras to people is about 1:1. The Post is reporting what the aid agencies say as if it's definitely the truth. They're putting what Israel says in a one-sentence disclaimer the way the would if they were reporting the opposite side of an argument for the sake of form, but they know (and we're supposed to know) that it's a crock. But I can't see, from their reporting, *how* they would know that. This is what journalism is for--you go and you look--so why aren't they doing it? Israel is the only non-Anglo country in the world that gets this level of coverage in the Anglophone media: There are *tons* of reporters on the ground there. It shouldn't be at all difficult to figure out what's happening.
All reporting on the conflict (and the hostages) has to go through the military censor before being published. If that covers the number of aid trucks entering Gaza, and it seems like it would, then it's hard to see how any IDF lies would be exposed.
The intercept has a link (?) to the English Language order in its article here:
1. It is *not* true that all reporting on the conflict has to go through the military censor. Israel has thousands of TV stations, radio stations, podcasts newspapers, local and national, and countless blogs, all in Hebrew, Arabic, English, and dozens of other languages. It probably has more news outlets per capita than any other country. How could they possibly report the news in a timely way (especially because news is always urgent and breaking) if they had to submit every word to a censor? Israel isn't the Soviet Union--or anything like it.
It *is* true that certain topics are subject to military censorship, but they're strictly defined and if they're not listed, you can't get in trouble for writing about them. (Israel also has the rule of law: It's not Turkey). The law that governs this dates from a 1948 agreement between the army and the press that says censorship is based on *mutual agreement* to prevent breaches of state security. (Since Israeli journalists live there and serve in the military, or their kids do, most consider this reasonable.) Under the law, the censor supplies a limited list of topics pertaining *only* to military and security issues, not political ones, to the media; if you write about these topics, they must be vetted. The High Court has imposed strict limitations on this, and there's an appeals process--the court often overturns the censor's rulings. That said, yes, many articles about military issues are redacted by the censor.
Nothing on that list would bar reporters from discussing the entry of aid into Gaza. It's not "operational" at all. As they say, by "operational" they mean, "movements, operational plans, covert operations, vulnerabilities in the Israeli defense abilities, capabilities of the Iron dome system and other air and missile defense systems, images and/or videos that can identify the forces, their composition and scope." Nothing at all about "You can't count aid trucks entering at the crossings." COGAT is publishing photo after photo of aid convoys at the crossings: They *want* people to see that. They *want* the press to cover it.
2. The Israeli media circumvents this censorship, when it thinks the story is important, by leaking to foreign news outlets, which (of course) are not subject to Israeli law at all. (Then the Israeli media just quotes the story.) The IDF has *zero* legal power over foreign news agencies.
Palestinian journalists in the Occupied Territories are another story: There are many credible stories of Israel making life difficult, or impossible, for them--or, recently, dropping bombs on them. (Israeli Palestinian journalists are governed by the same laws as every other Israeli.) As it happens, the Al Jazeera reporter is Palestinian, but he works for a foreign news agency.
This doesn't mean there aren't other stories of foreign journalists having their credentials yanked for political reporting, it just means I can't think of any.
There are numerous stories of journalists being killed in crossfire, with the details hotly disputed: some say Israel deliberately shot them; others say it was an accident or they were shot by Palestinians; but I cannot imagine journalists cautioning one other, "Careful what you report about the aid trucks or they'll shoot you." It just doesn't work like that: Shootings like the ones you've read about take place in areas where there's a lot of confusion and live fire; it's not like the IDF just walks up to journalists who piss them off and whacks them in cold blood. Israel is *not* Russia.
3. But you're right to ask--it's always a good question--does this environment lend itself to self-censorship? I would answer: I see no evidence of it, so long as the report is critical of Israel. Foreign journalists are, on the whole, hostile to Israel. (I've been pretty shocked by it: I've spent a lot of time with foreign correspondents over the years, and I've heard them say some scandalous things.) Matti Friedman got it dead right here: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/how-the-media-makes-the-israel-story/383262/). Journalists are always looking for stories that cast Israel in a critical light.
I do see self-censorship, but in the other direction: The social pressure on journalists never to report anything good about Israel is so strong that you just don't see some obvious stories that would be easy to report and that would lend credence to what Israel is saying--or, you rarely see them outside of publications explicitly aimed at readers who are sympathetic to Israel. The story about Shifa Hospital, for example. Literally everyone--including me--knew it was Hamas's headquarters.
I think the article by Matti Friedman refers to that Scandinavian journalist's classic video report from Shifa about the injuries children were suffering in the latest round of fighting--do you remember this incident? Midway through, she pauses, because Hamas is noisily *launching a rocket* behind the hospital (the ground shakes, and she says "That's a rocket going off behind me"!) When the IDF later pointed out that it's a war crime to use a hospital to launch rockets and cited her video as evidence that this was happening, she went (so to speak) ballistic and accused them of "exploiting my reporting as war propaganda." She said--with a straight face!--"my story was about the *children,* it wasn't about Hamas!" It was a classic "mostly peaceful protests" moment.
And obviously, you *don't* want to talk about where Hamas is launching its rockets from if you're in Gaza, because while no accredited journalist in Israel fears the IDF will just shoot them dead if they report something that pisses them off, everyone knows Hamas will. Or worse. There's no such thing as uncensored reporting from Gaza.
So yes, there's self-censorship, but I highly, highly doubt it would apply to a story like this. If WaPo's reporters are afraid to count the trucks at the crossings for fear Israel's censors will expel them or shoot them, there are thousands of journalists who'd like their jobs and who've been around long enough to know that that is not how it works--at all.
4. Israel is really trying hard to push the story that it's not the obstacle to the entry of aid. They're tweeting about it. The press spokesmen are repeating it nightly. They're sending out press releases (I assume--I'm not on their media list, so I haven't received one. But usually they would, to people who are.) In my experience, if you tell the IDF you'd like to verify a story that makes them look good, not only will they not stand in your way, they'll help. None of the stories I've read about this so far include words like, "We tried to go to the crossings to count the number of trucks entering and exiting, but the IDF wouldn't let us." That's information every journalist would include in their stories, if they were reporting on this, if only to let their editors know that yes, they did get off their lazy asses to check.
5. It just occurred to me that there *must* be journalists at those crossings, because we've learned that there are Israeli protesters there. (Apparently the protesters are angry that the IDF is letting in fuel, because they think Hamas will seize it and that will prolong the war. They're angry, they say, because the IDF is more concerned with global opinion than the lives of the soldiers.) Of course, it's being reported as "Israelis are demonstrating because they want Palestinians to starve--there's no limit to their cruelty!" But if those protests were reported, why hasn't anyone stopped to count the trucks and report?
Au contraire, Claire, your at length answer is my jam - please be yourself, your answers are part of your USP and part of why we're all here.
So accredited journalists in Israel CAN do this fact checking and reporting, as far as the Israeli Govt is concerned, but they are not. We can only hypothesise about the reasons, informed by our own biases, but fwiw:
1) Mass market media can only accommodate a flat narrative. So there's an editorial stance that reporting needs to align with in order to be published, or which it is edited to align with before it's published - not by adding 'facts' per se, but by which facts are not removed, what context remains/is added, what language is used (eg "were killed" vs "died"). If I'm a reporter who wants his stuff published this may influence me (consciously or unconsciously).
2) MMM needs eyeballs. If I only have two reporters in Israel is it a good investment to have one of them stationed at the entry to Gaza counting aid trucks all day? What about the other stories they could cover which would get me more viewers (eg Israelis blocking aid trucks to Gaza with a dance party) but which could be done in a few hours?
3) Individuals bring their own biases to how they perceive things - in the case of reporters, make sense of what they observe so that they can actually write it down and report it. [In the case of consumers of media, whether we find it trustworthy or not and why, and what biases we see it displaying - usually the ones we don't share : -( - for eg my feeling is that reporting on this conflict in the MMM is largely pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian.]
4) What is reported, and how, has a huge impact on what happens in real life - and reporters know that. My feeling is that this influences reporters, and pulls them away from their mission of only reporting on what they see no matter the consequences for the people they're reporting on. It's corrupting, but perhaps inevitable.
Right now many of the people involved in reporting are triggered AF. And this conflict also plugs into the culture war in a way that most others don't. So factor these in.
Circling back (finally!) to the issue of hunger/famine in Gaza - it's possible for lots of aid trucks to enter Gaza and for there still to be famine in Gaza - both of these can be true. How and why? Where in Gaza? Who is responsible? What's stopping aid from getting there? If the problem is not the number of trucks going into Gaza, then what is the problem? [My gut says defunding UNRWA is part of it.] In fact what's the objective? Making food available all across Gaza?
Hebrew is my second language so my consumption of the local press is often only headline-deep. So take what I say with a grain of salt. But from what I can tell, the local media report with the presumption that the IDF and COGAT and gov't spokespeople are on the whole telling the truth, and the UN and aid agencies are all unfair and out to get us so what's the point of fact-checking them (I'm going to presume that Ha'aretz is a lone exception to this). I agree, it's infuriating that no actual investigative journalism is being attempted. My own view is that the western press just assumes the UN is reliable and COGAT is propaganda that should be ignored. But they don't want to acknowledge that UNRWA and the entire "aid industrial complex" have their own agenda, and that is to tell the story that Israel is the oppressor and the Gazans are the perpetual victims. That bias colors the story every time.
Claire - thanks for pushing back on the narrative and the idea that active journalism is just taking things at face value.
However I do take issue with one part of your article - unfortunately due to your reportage I have now been exposed to the nonsense that is Owen Jones and I cannot un-know it.
He has rich comic value.
Look at motive. Why would aid agencies lie, why would COGAT lie? They all have their agendas and objectives.
I can guess at the motives, what I don't understand is lying about something which, in principle, is so easy to disprove.
Because once a narrative is set it has its own momentum, it takes effort to change it. Disproving something usually isn't as click baity as an overstated accusation.
That's why, imo, both sides in this conflict are so promiscuously accusatory. Throw enough muck and some will stick, never mind if some nerds then spend months trying to figure out whether Israel bombed al Ahli hospital or not, or whether there were 40 beheaded babies or not, or whether (our current cycle) Hamas undertook systematic sexual violence on 7 October or not...
To also consider: my impression is that people following this conflict trend partisan - there are not many genuinely neutral observers. So whatever we hear that supports our biases (Israel is a racist colonialist state founded with war crimes and ethnic cleansing, Palestinians are Khamas are congenitally murderous antisemites who live only to kill innocent Jews) shores those biases up, even if it's later disproved. It's not like any of our views are completely dependent on facts and logic, or that any of us is eager to lean into the cognitive dissonance in order to emerge more enlightened beings.
In short: even when they lie about easily disprovable things they do it to achieve an objective. And it's hard to fault them professionally, the method seems to work.
Maybe. But the world you're describing is one in which no one gives a damn about what's true, including the journalists, and I can't fully bring myself to accept that we're living in that world.
Clearly not 'no one' but a critical mass of people (based on my subjective assessment of the sewer that is my twitter feed). Or even worse, at some level they persuade themselves a lie is true.
Claire; during this very war an IDF Colonel stood in front of an empty calendar and claimed that it contains names of guards assigned to guard hostages in a hospital basement.
Anyone speaking Arabic can see that the man was pointing at the day of the week on an otherwise empty calendar. The IDF has been lying about easily disproved things constantly this war. If you don't see that yet, I urge you to reconsider your biases. An article wondering out loud if the UN has more reason to lie than an actual combatant in the war (which is what COGAT is) is wild to me.
Exhibit B: The Israeli government getting Western nations to defund the UNRWA because it's apparently a terrorist group. Canada reversed that decision recently, Australia next. Their reversal speaks louder than them going along with the funding freeze. Norway's FM predicted prior to the first reversal that she expects countries to backtrack. (Diplomatic for: Israel lied).
Edit: An observer likened Israeli propaganda to Russian propaganda and I 100% agree. Both lie about easily disproved things; the point is to make the consumer distrust everything not coming from Israel/Russia which is exactly what happens here when we put the UN and COGAT on equal ground.
See my comment below: https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/whats-really-going-on-with-aid-deliveries/comment/51769896. Emmanuel, I've worked for the UN, and my sister's a UN peacekeeper. I've seen them lie *plenty* when they think it's in their interest. The UN is just notorious when it comes to Israel. Between 2015 and 2022, the General Assembly adopted 140 resolutions criticizing Israel for every wrongdoing imaginable. Over the same period, it passed 68 resolutions against *all other countries combined*--that's to say, including Iran, Eritrea, Russia, Myanmar, China, Syria, Uzbekistan, North Korea, Sudan, Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, and every other country in the world. This is not the behavior of an entity whose word is manifestly more credible than a combatant.
The evidence that UNRWA employees were involved in October 7 looks pretty strong to me. It's based on footage captured during the attacks, phone intercepts, signal intelligence, cellphone tracking data, interrogations of captured Hamaniks, and documents recovered from dead militants. Decisions about defunding and refunding the agency are being made on the basis of politics, to some extent, not that evidence, but mostly in light of there being no other distribution system for aid, which Canada might not have fully realized. Why would you be doubt, a priori, that this could be true? Have you ever seen the textbooks they use in UNRWA schools? Read this and tell me if you still find the idea that terrorists might be among UNRWA employees completely implausible: https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/UNRWA-Education-Textbooks-and-Terror-Nov-2023.pdf . (This is why the UK and the EU pulled funding for those textbooks.)
I haven't seen the video you mention, of the IDF Colonel and the calendar.
I've had some contact with the IDF as a journalist; I did not *at all* sense that they operate the way Russia does. They're often bad at PR, as we discuss in the podcast, and sometimes they don't bother at all--there's a sense in Israel that it's a waste of time even to try to explain their point of view because everyone's going to call them monsters them no matter what they do. I understand why they feel that way, but it doesn't excuse not trying--it's not true that the whole world is implacably hostile to Israel, and even among those who are, minds can change.
I've asked the IDF a lot of questions about controversial issues, especially after the Mavi Marmara incident. (I was working on a documentary about it; you can see some of the footage we never used here: https://murkyinturkey.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/a-day-at-the-ihh-the-jewish-people-are-dying-because-of-your-shrewd-questioning/) I never felt (or discovered) that they were lying to me. I *did* feel that they didn't make enough of an effort to answer my questions. They often said they'd get back to me, but never did. I doubt they were deliberately stonewalling me. I think they just figured I just wasn't important or connected enough to be worth their time. This is an example of what I mean when I say they're bad at PR: If you have a journalist in front of you who knows the Turkish side of that story inside and out and *isn't hostile to Israel,* you should make time for her. Yes, time and resources are scarce, but if I'd been them, I would have.
Fair enough. I’m not saying the UN doesn’t lie either; as a Lebanese their behavior on the Syrian file has been appalling. As a physician; their behavior on CoVID has been criminal.
We can agree to disagree on whether Israel is saying the truth; but I also feel I have some knowledge given I intimately know what happened in Lebanon. The infamous Dahieh Doctrine is, after all, named after my nation.
As for the IDF colonel and the calendar; only France 24 and NBC mention it from a google search:
https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/truth-or-fake/20231116-idf-claims-to-find-list-of-hamas-names-but-it-s-the-days-of-the-week-in-arabic
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna125723
But links don’t do it justice; this happens at the original video at 1:20
https://youtu.be/49oKiE1x09s?si=gMQ1GbYXcMvTVIv9
The IDF was using this video to justify bombing a hospital (Al rantassi if I remember correctly). So it did not sit well with me.
I so wish you'd joined us for our discussion of Lebanon. We talked quite a bit about Israel's invasion(s), but there's nothing like hearing it from someone who lived it. (Although--are you old enough to remember the invasion(s) in the 1980s? Probably not, right?) But you've been surrounded by people who lived through it, and that matters.
On the calendar, I'm confused. In the video, he points to the calendar and says, "We are in an operation." He points to the top of the calendar, which does indeed (from what I understand) say, "Operation al Aqsa mosque." He doesn't say that below are the names of the terrorists. In the first video, he points to the same part of the calendar and shows that it refers to the Operation on October, 7, then says "This is a guard list where every terrorist writes his name, and has his own shift, guarding the people that were here."
Curious, I looked for the tweet that France24 was talking about, from November 15, but it's not there. I found this: https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1724245759174791626, which says,
"Beneath the Rantisi Hospital in Gaza, IDF forces found a room where Israeli hostages are believed to have been held. The calendar found in the room marked the days since October 7 Massacre with the title “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”, Hamas’ name for their horrific attack on Israel."
The "list of names" idea appears to have taken off on Twitter, with people writing things like "Those are dead men walking," and such. Arabic speakers of course found this funny, because on the list were days of the week, not names. I think the *responses* to this are why France24 thought the idea that they'd found the names of the terrorists in that room was worth debunking.
But I don't see this as some huge, important lie, do you? It *does* say, "October 7 al Aqsa Flood operation" at the top, and the days since October 7 are crossed off, as they would be if people were completing shifts. In the context of everything else they found (RPGs? Grenades? Suicide vests?), it seems to me plausible to conclude that it's a schedule for guarding the captives, or at the least, to think they said this in good faith. It's not evidence that on its own could be used to convict someone in a court of law, but it's a reasonable guess. He may have meant to say, "This is a guardian list where every terrorist crosses off his shift, guarding the people that were here."
The point they were trying to make is that this room is connected to Hamas and not something you'd usually see under a hospital. I don't see this as a significant and deliberate lie, do you? It seems as if he misspoke--pretty common if English isn't your first language, you're under a massive amount of stress, and you're not thinking too closely about it. I'm sure he thought that the key point was that they'd found a sign of the hostages. If they really wanted to lie about what they found, they could plant evidence.
I find bad faith in the NBC article, though--not France24's or the Telegraph's, just NBC's. It's dripping with scorn, saying it's just "an Arabic calendar" but doesn't say what's written on top of it. That's a lie by omission. Readers can't understand the story if they don't know that. (I'm much harder on journalists who lie than I am on soldiers. We're not under that kind of. stress, and we have lots of time to think about what we're saying.)
As for whether those curtains are evidence that hostage videos have been filmed there, no one--not the IDF, not the journalists--mentions whether these curtains have, in fact, been seen in a hostage video. That would be dispositive. And again, the NBC article doesn't mention the RPGs, grenades, etc. right by the curtains. Actually, the NBC article is appalling. All insinuation, no accurate reporting.
As for using the video to justify bombing a hospital--that's obviously the most horrifying aspect of the war. There's a huge amount of evidence that Hamas uses civilian facilities like hospitals as weapons depots, tunnel entrances, and rocket launching sites--which is a war crime--but does that justify bombing them?
If Israelis say, "hospitals are off limits," Hamas will hide in the hospitals. That means they can slaughter as many Israelis as they like, as often as they like, so long as they hide in hospitals afterward. Obviously, no Israeli leader would survive a minute if he said, "We can't protect you from terrorism because the terrorists are behaving like terrorists."
The only alternative to bombing hospitals (or any place Hamas hides) is living with Hamas, and that's not compatible with Israeli survival. Hamas says it will do what it did on October 7 over and over again, each time, effectively, shrinking the size of Israel.
I realize that I'm defending the decision to bomb a hospital, which is never a position you want to be in. But I can't figure out a way out of this dilemma--can you?
After the war, there will be investigations of all of these decisions. We'll understand a lot more about how these targets were chosen and how significant they were to Hamas's operations. My guess is that some of these decisions will prove to have been unjustifiable, but others will prove justifiable (at least, under the laws of war) There's probably no better option available to Israelis, save saying, "Fuck it, I'd rather live with Hamas next door and take my chances than kill kids in hospitals," which is what I think I'd say. I simply can't imagine giving the order to bomb a hospital, or doing it--and I pity the guys who were ordered to do it, because it will haunt them forever.
But you can't say "fuck it" if you're an elected leader--and no one with kids would ever say it. I can say that I'd choose, for myself, to be killed by Hamas before I'd bomb a hospital. But no one would ever tolerate that for their kids. Especially after you've seen the videos of what Hamas does to kids.
So--it's an awful situation.
An important clarification: Israel didn't bomb this hospital. They destroyed a tunnel near the hospital.
A second point worth noting: Israel said it had separate intelligence confirming that hostages were being held there. That's why they were there in the first place.
This issue is on the front page of the NYT today, above the fold, in a slightly more coherent article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-aid.html#commentsContainer.
The reason I become so exercised about the tone of the Times' coverage can be seen in the comments. Here are the first two:
Ed: "Israel is blocking the delivery of food to starving Gazans. This is obvious. This is intentional policy. Stop the nonsense that it is an accidental or circumstantial outcome. It very clearly is not. The United States is being enormously damaged as regards its credibility on the world stage each day it tolerates these Israeli lies."
Jacques: :It’s difficult to find printable words to describe the deliberate starvation of millions of people. Only one nation can make relief truly effective and yet it’s patently not doing it. The stated Israeli aim - the unattainable total destruction of Hamas - does not explain, excuse or justify this abomination."
Most people get all of their news about Israel from media outlets like the Times. It's hard to blame these readers for coming to this conclusion since the Times has gone to such remarkable lengths to suggest it. (I blame them anyway: They're idiots.)
From what I can tell, COGAT's messages and press releases are basically ignored by the English language media. Thank you for highlighting this.
You're in Israel, right? How is this being reported in the Hebrew-language press? I'm really puzzled--I don't want to come out with guns blazing and insist this stuff about Israel refusing to allow trucks in is a baldfaced lie: I have no evidence of this. But something about this doesn't add up: I can't see why either the aid agencies or COGAT would lie about something that can be so easily verified--this isn't a subjective thing, this is an empirical, observable fact, and it's taking place in a country where the ratio of news cameras to people is about 1:1. The Post is reporting what the aid agencies say as if it's definitely the truth. They're putting what Israel says in a one-sentence disclaimer the way the would if they were reporting the opposite side of an argument for the sake of form, but they know (and we're supposed to know) that it's a crock. But I can't see, from their reporting, *how* they would know that. This is what journalism is for--you go and you look--so why aren't they doing it? Israel is the only non-Anglo country in the world that gets this level of coverage in the Anglophone media: There are *tons* of reporters on the ground there. It shouldn't be at all difficult to figure out what's happening.
All reporting on the conflict (and the hostages) has to go through the military censor before being published. If that covers the number of aid trucks entering Gaza, and it seems like it would, then it's hard to see how any IDF lies would be exposed.
The intercept has a link (?) to the English Language order in its article here:
https://theintercept.com/2023/12/23/israel-military-idf-media-censor/
[Added: I just re-read it. If the IDF accompanying aid trucks to Gaza is operational then it's covered, if it isn't then it isn't. It seems.]
Let me answer at length, a bit--forgive me.
1. It is *not* true that all reporting on the conflict has to go through the military censor. Israel has thousands of TV stations, radio stations, podcasts newspapers, local and national, and countless blogs, all in Hebrew, Arabic, English, and dozens of other languages. It probably has more news outlets per capita than any other country. How could they possibly report the news in a timely way (especially because news is always urgent and breaking) if they had to submit every word to a censor? Israel isn't the Soviet Union--or anything like it.
It *is* true that certain topics are subject to military censorship, but they're strictly defined and if they're not listed, you can't get in trouble for writing about them. (Israel also has the rule of law: It's not Turkey). The law that governs this dates from a 1948 agreement between the army and the press that says censorship is based on *mutual agreement* to prevent breaches of state security. (Since Israeli journalists live there and serve in the military, or their kids do, most consider this reasonable.) Under the law, the censor supplies a limited list of topics pertaining *only* to military and security issues, not political ones, to the media; if you write about these topics, they must be vetted. The High Court has imposed strict limitations on this, and there's an appeals process--the court often overturns the censor's rulings. That said, yes, many articles about military issues are redacted by the censor.
Nothing on that list would bar reporters from discussing the entry of aid into Gaza. It's not "operational" at all. As they say, by "operational" they mean, "movements, operational plans, covert operations, vulnerabilities in the Israeli defense abilities, capabilities of the Iron dome system and other air and missile defense systems, images and/or videos that can identify the forces, their composition and scope." Nothing at all about "You can't count aid trucks entering at the crossings." COGAT is publishing photo after photo of aid convoys at the crossings: They *want* people to see that. They *want* the press to cover it.
2. The Israeli media circumvents this censorship, when it thinks the story is important, by leaking to foreign news outlets, which (of course) are not subject to Israeli law at all. (Then the Israeli media just quotes the story.) The IDF has *zero* legal power over foreign news agencies.
Of course, journalists who live in Israel and want to stay there could, in principle, lose their press credentials. But despite some ministers' bluster (especially about throwing out Al Jazeera--see: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-08-30/ty-article/loyalist-netanyahu-minister-reportedly-seeks-to-restrain-foreign-journalists-credentials/0000018a-4559-d192-abaf-675fe4d20000), the only story I can remember of a foreign journalist's credentials actually being revoked is that guy from Al Jazeera--and they backtracked when the Israeli journalists' union went to bat for him.
Palestinian journalists in the Occupied Territories are another story: There are many credible stories of Israel making life difficult, or impossible, for them--or, recently, dropping bombs on them. (Israeli Palestinian journalists are governed by the same laws as every other Israeli.) As it happens, the Al Jazeera reporter is Palestinian, but he works for a foreign news agency.
This doesn't mean there aren't other stories of foreign journalists having their credentials yanked for political reporting, it just means I can't think of any.
There are numerous stories of journalists being killed in crossfire, with the details hotly disputed: some say Israel deliberately shot them; others say it was an accident or they were shot by Palestinians; but I cannot imagine journalists cautioning one other, "Careful what you report about the aid trucks or they'll shoot you." It just doesn't work like that: Shootings like the ones you've read about take place in areas where there's a lot of confusion and live fire; it's not like the IDF just walks up to journalists who piss them off and whacks them in cold blood. Israel is *not* Russia.
3. But you're right to ask--it's always a good question--does this environment lend itself to self-censorship? I would answer: I see no evidence of it, so long as the report is critical of Israel. Foreign journalists are, on the whole, hostile to Israel. (I've been pretty shocked by it: I've spent a lot of time with foreign correspondents over the years, and I've heard them say some scandalous things.) Matti Friedman got it dead right here: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/how-the-media-makes-the-israel-story/383262/). Journalists are always looking for stories that cast Israel in a critical light.
I do see self-censorship, but in the other direction: The social pressure on journalists never to report anything good about Israel is so strong that you just don't see some obvious stories that would be easy to report and that would lend credence to what Israel is saying--or, you rarely see them outside of publications explicitly aimed at readers who are sympathetic to Israel. The story about Shifa Hospital, for example. Literally everyone--including me--knew it was Hamas's headquarters.
I think the article by Matti Friedman refers to that Scandinavian journalist's classic video report from Shifa about the injuries children were suffering in the latest round of fighting--do you remember this incident? Midway through, she pauses, because Hamas is noisily *launching a rocket* behind the hospital (the ground shakes, and she says "That's a rocket going off behind me"!) When the IDF later pointed out that it's a war crime to use a hospital to launch rockets and cited her video as evidence that this was happening, she went (so to speak) ballistic and accused them of "exploiting my reporting as war propaganda." She said--with a straight face!--"my story was about the *children,* it wasn't about Hamas!" It was a classic "mostly peaceful protests" moment.
And obviously, you *don't* want to talk about where Hamas is launching its rockets from if you're in Gaza, because while no accredited journalist in Israel fears the IDF will just shoot them dead if they report something that pisses them off, everyone knows Hamas will. Or worse. There's no such thing as uncensored reporting from Gaza.
So yes, there's self-censorship, but I highly, highly doubt it would apply to a story like this. If WaPo's reporters are afraid to count the trucks at the crossings for fear Israel's censors will expel them or shoot them, there are thousands of journalists who'd like their jobs and who've been around long enough to know that that is not how it works--at all.
4. Israel is really trying hard to push the story that it's not the obstacle to the entry of aid. They're tweeting about it. The press spokesmen are repeating it nightly. They're sending out press releases (I assume--I'm not on their media list, so I haven't received one. But usually they would, to people who are.) In my experience, if you tell the IDF you'd like to verify a story that makes them look good, not only will they not stand in your way, they'll help. None of the stories I've read about this so far include words like, "We tried to go to the crossings to count the number of trucks entering and exiting, but the IDF wouldn't let us." That's information every journalist would include in their stories, if they were reporting on this, if only to let their editors know that yes, they did get off their lazy asses to check.
5. It just occurred to me that there *must* be journalists at those crossings, because we've learned that there are Israeli protesters there. (Apparently the protesters are angry that the IDF is letting in fuel, because they think Hamas will seize it and that will prolong the war. They're angry, they say, because the IDF is more concerned with global opinion than the lives of the soldiers.) Of course, it's being reported as "Israelis are demonstrating because they want Palestinians to starve--there's no limit to their cruelty!" But if those protests were reported, why hasn't anyone stopped to count the trucks and report?
Au contraire, Claire, your at length answer is my jam - please be yourself, your answers are part of your USP and part of why we're all here.
So accredited journalists in Israel CAN do this fact checking and reporting, as far as the Israeli Govt is concerned, but they are not. We can only hypothesise about the reasons, informed by our own biases, but fwiw:
1) Mass market media can only accommodate a flat narrative. So there's an editorial stance that reporting needs to align with in order to be published, or which it is edited to align with before it's published - not by adding 'facts' per se, but by which facts are not removed, what context remains/is added, what language is used (eg "were killed" vs "died"). If I'm a reporter who wants his stuff published this may influence me (consciously or unconsciously).
2) MMM needs eyeballs. If I only have two reporters in Israel is it a good investment to have one of them stationed at the entry to Gaza counting aid trucks all day? What about the other stories they could cover which would get me more viewers (eg Israelis blocking aid trucks to Gaza with a dance party) but which could be done in a few hours?
3) Individuals bring their own biases to how they perceive things - in the case of reporters, make sense of what they observe so that they can actually write it down and report it. [In the case of consumers of media, whether we find it trustworthy or not and why, and what biases we see it displaying - usually the ones we don't share : -( - for eg my feeling is that reporting on this conflict in the MMM is largely pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian.]
4) What is reported, and how, has a huge impact on what happens in real life - and reporters know that. My feeling is that this influences reporters, and pulls them away from their mission of only reporting on what they see no matter the consequences for the people they're reporting on. It's corrupting, but perhaps inevitable.
Right now many of the people involved in reporting are triggered AF. And this conflict also plugs into the culture war in a way that most others don't. So factor these in.
Circling back (finally!) to the issue of hunger/famine in Gaza - it's possible for lots of aid trucks to enter Gaza and for there still to be famine in Gaza - both of these can be true. How and why? Where in Gaza? Who is responsible? What's stopping aid from getting there? If the problem is not the number of trucks going into Gaza, then what is the problem? [My gut says defunding UNRWA is part of it.] In fact what's the objective? Making food available all across Gaza?
Hebrew is my second language so my consumption of the local press is often only headline-deep. So take what I say with a grain of salt. But from what I can tell, the local media report with the presumption that the IDF and COGAT and gov't spokespeople are on the whole telling the truth, and the UN and aid agencies are all unfair and out to get us so what's the point of fact-checking them (I'm going to presume that Ha'aretz is a lone exception to this). I agree, it's infuriating that no actual investigative journalism is being attempted. My own view is that the western press just assumes the UN is reliable and COGAT is propaganda that should be ignored. But they don't want to acknowledge that UNRWA and the entire "aid industrial complex" have their own agenda, and that is to tell the story that Israel is the oppressor and the Gazans are the perpetual victims. That bias colors the story every time.
Sounds about right to me.