In late May, an Israeli airstrike set a Gazan refugee camp in Rafah ablaze, killing 45 people, half of whom were women, children, or elderly. International media covered the event, one of the deadliest single incidents in Gaza, notwithstanding the latest strike that killed dozens on August 10. For the readers of outlets like the New York Times, TIME, or The Guardian, that horrific incident — which Israeli officials called a “tragic mistake” — is likely to be remembered as one of the worst moments of human suffering in this war.
But inside of Israel, coverage of that same event looked very different. NIFC project partner Sikkuy-Aufoq: For an Equal and Shared Society, in partnership with the media monitoring organization The Seventh Eye, commissioned a study into how the main Israeli news channels have been covering the war in Gaza. They found that Hebrew news outlets were simply ignoring events like the Rafah fire in May. Indeed, when it came to that specific incident, nearly 80% of news programs did not cover the Rafah fire at all.
Of those that did cover the event, just 12% described the incident as a tragedy or included the troubling photos that accompanied nearly every international report. And even with 45 people dead, the right-wing media was often celebratory.
Recently, Sikkuy and The Seventh Eye summarized their findings — and their recommendations — in a letter that they sent to the leading Israeli news channels. Its title read: “Biased and partial media coverage is a danger to us all.” It called on the networks to better fulfill their obligation to inform the Israeli public.
The letter, translated here from the original Hebrew reads, in part:
We, the managers of civil society organizations that work to promote a better future for all citizens in Israel, turn to you with great concern. For over eight months we have been living in a difficult and painful war, during which many citizens experienced direct harm and loss, and many of us live with a continuous feeling of anxiety and fear. The media has a particularly critical role to play during this period to bring the complete and balanced picture [to the public], one that cannot be found by scrolling through social media.
[…]
The longer the current pattern of coverage by the media continues, the greater the danger of harm in the long term to the democratic processes of Israel and to the infrastructure that enables the equal and shared existence of Jews and Arabs. In addition, today, there is almost no public platform in Israel where in-depth, serious public discourse takes place on the most significant and fateful issue affecting our lives: The future of the national conflict between Jews and Palestinians, and the ways to resolve it. It is the media’s responsibility to produce and facilitate such a discourse. Israeli citizens have the right and duty to understand the consequences of the war both on the Palestinian residents of Gaza and the West Bank, and on the Arab society in Israel, as well as on the Jewish citizens of Israel.
This study and the letter pressing for action by the media are part of a long-term effort by a number of civil society organizations to hold the media accountable for their decisions that shape what the Israeli public knows. Previous campaigns by these organizations have had real impact, including, for example, by increasing the representation of Palestinian citizens of Israel on Israeli television broadcasts.