by Ellen Strömqvist
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I’ve learned – and unlearned – a lot of different aspects in the over two years since Israel started its aggressive genocidal campaign in Gaza. From the context and history of the oppression of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli establishment, up to the lack of credibility and ethics of what one would call “the established media”, it has been a period of decolonising the mind and reframing the world.
Throughout these past two years, there’s been so many times that I’ve had to try and find the established sources in order to share with others, for them to take the information seriously. And so many times that meant centering voices that are western, white and reinforcing colonial, imperialist structures. Meanwhile, Palestinians on the ground who were in the middle of it all and filming and posting online were deemed not enough: not credible enough, not professional enough, not enough of a journalist, not Western. And because Israel would not let international journalists on the ground in Gaza, the results became a combination of lack of reporting and repeating the words of Israeli officials, all the while sowing doubt on Palestinian sources.
While publications like the BBC, New York Times, CNN, The Telegraph would be able to publish any article, no matter how biased or unchecked, because of the trust put into them as “established” news, Palestinian sources (a.k.a. journalists on the ground) had to have other western publications picking up the news and publishing it in a more polished manner, to be able to compete for people’s attention and trust.
In one example on the skewed article titles, Western news publications would systematically use the phrase “Hamas-run Health Ministry says”, when reporting death numbers, attacks, lack of equipment, medicine or tools in hospitals. This would in turn create doubt on the verity of the information, given its association with Hamas, when, in reality, it was just the Gazan Health Ministry, the highest local authority on the matter. Along the same lines, quote marks would be used in titles naming various attacks or deaths, yet again raising doubt on the reporting itself (an example from The Telegraph: Israeli strike on Gaza hospital ‘kills 15, including journalists’). Meanwhile, declarations from Israeli politicians or made on social media pages of Israeli institutions would be taken at face value and presented as facts, constantly creating consent and legitimizing the occupier’s actions. Such declarations meant also creating consent for the bombing of hospitals in Gaza, as they would gradually declare each hospital as a “Hamas base”, in the aftermath of which they were not able to show any proof of those allegations. But the media was happy to propagate the words of Israeli leaders, without any filter or investigation on those declarations.
At the same time, article titles mentioning Palestinian victims would reach various levels of dehumanisation: by focusing on numbers, reducing whole lives to names in a list, or names missing entirely (all the while each Israeli victim would have their whole life’s story presented to the public in the news); or by focusing on the women and children, essentially deeming the men as not worthy of mourning (this also connects to our Western perspective of what a “good” victim is, one without agency, unable to defend themselves, in need of saving by the Western hero – and ultimately denying them the right to resist and fight back). Other titles would use grammar gymnastics like “man under the age of 18” for a 13 year-old child or having, within the same title, Israelis be “killed” and Palestinians “died”, taking away the agency and blame away from the Israeli occupation’s forces.
Medics, journalists, volunteers working with aid, children playing, all would be turned into suspected terrorists and therefore become sensible targets for the Western audience. And the Western media is complicit in every killing, through their consent-making, through each article that dehumanises Palestinians, and does not dare or care to look deeper into officials’ declarations, nor to right their wrongs. Even now, when different international organisations, like the UN or Amnesty International, that are commonly considered authorities in the Global North, name Israel’s genocide in Gaza for what it is, the Imperialist press refuses to report on it, or instead begins by centering Israeli representatives’ reactions or opinions on those declarations (reactions like calling the reports antisemitic or denying that which they stand accused of), therefore failing to stand independently and instead remaining asserted to the interests of Imperialist powers.