Is Biased Media Coverage Of War In Gaza Causing Spike In Global Anti-Semitism?

It shouldn’t be a secret to any objectively thinking person that media coverage of wars effects and shapes global public opinion on the conflict, as well as influencing leaders and decision makers.

For the best part of a decade, all of Israel’s defensive wars against the terrorists of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, have been closely scrutinized by the world media, which has used such buzzwords as “disproportionately” and “war crimes.”

The coverage from the western media, such as CNN, Sky News, and the BBC, on the recent conflict between Israel and the Palestinians reached an all-time low, as presenters grilled Israeli representatives live on air, accusing them time after time — personally, in some cases — of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

When those same presenters interviewed representatives from the “other” side, be they Hamas spokesmen or Muslim commentators, the whole approach toward the line of questioning was different. It is a little hard to explain in words, as the media well knows, one touching picture speaks more than a million words ever can.

To highlight the anti-Israel bias prevalent at the moment in the media, we have embedded below some clips of recent interviews showing Israeli parliament members and spokespeople who were literally grilled by their interviewer, in some cases, in a very awkward way.

The first example is an interview on BBC’s Impact show, which featured Israeli spokesman Dore Gold, followed by Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashwari.

As you will see for yourself in the clip, the interviewer’s line of questioning to Dore Gold, on the Israel side, is hostile and some would say offensive. On the other hand, when she questions Hanan Ashwari on the Palestinian side, her whole demeanor is different and way less offensive.

In another example of blatant anti-Israel bias in the media, the next clip, which features Israel’s Minister of Finance, Naftali Bennett, being interviewed on Sky News, the interviewer mumbles derogatory comments under her breath, but audibly enough for the microphone to pick up. This interview is more subtle than the previous one but sums up Sky News’ attitude toward Israel during the current conflict.

And by contrast, it seems, whenever CNN or the BBC do get the “honor” of talking live on air to a Hamas spokesman, they are allowed to speak, unchallenged for minutes on end. The media appears to show them a lot more respect — even though they represent a terrorist organization — than they do Israeli parliament members.

In this example, CNN’s Wolff Blitzer spoke to Hamas’ Osama Hamdan, and while the interviewer did well to present horrific details of “Jewish blood libel,” comments that Hamdan had made in another interview, he questioned him calmly and did not cut him off in mid-sentence.

There are, of course, numerous other examples of blatant anti-Israel bias in the western media. This has led to suggestions that, due to the influence of the media, it is the media itself which is directly responsible for the recent spike in worldwide anti-Semitism which has been noted in many countries during the last month or so.

Bear in mind that the images from Gaza showed only what Hamas permitted. Hamas terrorized and censored journalists. It only allowed them to broadcast images of destruction and killing of civilians, particularly women and children, and staged situations on the ground.

There were, of course, no images of rockets launched from populated areas and from within UNRWA schools, mosques and hospitals. There were only images of civilians’ bodies and funerals and very few images of Hamas fighters.

Only after they left Gaza, a few journalists like the Italian Gabriele Barbati and Gallagher Fenwick of France 24, dared to expose the way Hamas terrorized journalists, its use of civilians as human shields and its failed launches which resulted in the killing of children, like at the Shati refugee camp on July 28.

There is little doubt that the numbers of alleged Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza, while tragic, were doctored. Publications like the New York Times — no friend of Israel — published wrong Gaza death tolls every single day on their front pages, thereby making some equivalence between “numbers dead” and “Israeli war crimes.”

Using this twisted logic, one could say that Nazi Germany, which had one million dead civilians in World War II, was the victim of the aggressiveness of the United States, which lost “only” 12,000 civilians, and Britain, which lost “only” 67,000 civilians.

The question remains: What connection is there between skewed media coverage on the conflict in Gaza and the rise in anti-Semitic attacks across the world?