AILSA CHANG, HOST:
There's a widening gap between how Israelis and the rest of the world perceive the war and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Much of that is due to how the Israeli media portray the conflict at home. Some Israelis say that their media have abandoned their most essential role, that of keeping the public informed. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley tells us more.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: If you turn on Israeli TV, you won't see what you'd see on CNN or BBC when it comes to the war in Gaza, says Dahlia Scheindlin, a public opinion researcher and columnist for Israel's left-leaning and oldest newspaper, Haaretz.
DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN: The angle is almost always this very innocent, well, we're fighting this war. Yes, there's lots of destruction, and people are moving. But, you know, here's our latest operation, and this is what happened when those soldiers were killed. The story of Palestinian civilians is never at the center.
BEARDSLEY: Scheindlin says that as long as hostages are being held, Israelis will not be able to move past the trauma of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.
GIDEON LEVY: Denial is denial. And if you deny crimes, you deny crimes.
BEARDSLEY: Gideon Levy is on the editorial board of Haaretz. He's referring to his recent column equating Israelis' denial of starvation in Gaza with denial of the Holocaust. Levy says Haaretz is the only mainstream media covering the starvation and suffering in Gaza, though its readership is tiny.
LEVY: Let's put aside opinions, ideologies. The first basic, basic role of ours is to inform, to report. And the Israeli media is betraying it.
BEARDSLEY: For commercial reasons, he says, they don't want to lose readership and viewers. But the international media's coverage of Gaza is starting to pierce the Israeli bubble.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: The country's top news program recently ran a segment on how the foreign media are covering starvation, though the framing was Israel must do a better job getting its narrative across.
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YONIT LEVI: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: "But maybe it's time to understand this isn't a PR failure, but a moral failure," said star anchor Yonit Levi. That one line triggered an online backlash. Levi was called a Hamas spokeswoman and accused of spitting in the face of Israeli soldiers.
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EMMANUELLE ELBAZ-PHELPS: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: In another incident, French Israeli journalist Emmanuelle Elbaz-Phelps brought up Gaza starvation on a talk show.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: OK.
BEARDSLEY: This needs to be said, she insisted, as the anchors try to cut her off.
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BEARDSLEY: "With all due respect," says one anchor, "I don't need to worry about what's happening in Gaza." Ariel Kahana writes for Israel Hayom, a conservative daily. He admits Israelis don't have much room for Gaza's suffering after they saw people across Gaza celebrate the October 7 Hamas attack. "Yes, there is destruction," he says, "but Israeli journalists don't believe there is starvation."
ARIEL KAHANA: It's war zone, no question about that. But you saw the markets in Gaza are working, even in the most difficult times. Of course, you saw the Hamas terrorists fed very nicely. So it tells you that there is probably enough food. On top of all that, many of the reports in the international media, it was clear that it was fake.
BEARDSLEY: He says Israelis are used to, quote, "western media campaigns against us." Last week, a U.N.-backed panel of international food security experts said famine had taken hold in northern Gaza. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called that, quote, "an outright lie."
Shalom, Eleanor.
Anat Saragusti is in charge of press freedom at the Union of Journalists in Israel. She says the media's failure to cover Gaza is actually dangerous for Israel.
ANAT SARAGUSTI: It creates a gap between what the international community is seeing coming out of Gaza and the atrocities and the starvation. And Israelis are seeing none of this. And then the Israelis tend to think that criticism against the policies of the state of Israel is antisemitism.
BEARDSLEY: Turning on the TV, Saragusti sees something new.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: Building by building, Gaza is being erased. Cities like broken skeletons laid waste by war.
BEARDSLEY: A British report from a plane dropping aid shows the pulverized landscape below.
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UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: An Israeli commentator tries to downplay the footage. But Saragusti says the Israeli media are starting to lose control of the narrative.
SARAGUSTI: Now these airplanes coming from Canada, U.K. and other Western countries carrying real journalists with real cameras, they take aerial shots of the destruction in Gaza.
BEARDSLEY: Until now, international journalists have not been allowed into Gaza unless accompanied by Israeli troops. Twenty-seven countries just signed a joint statement demanding that Israel allow media in to report the full truth of this war.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Tel Aviv. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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