Gaza, a strategy to make a genocide invisible

By Mehdi Belmecheri-Rozental

For the past year, Israel has implemented a strategy aimed at limiting the flow of information and images from the Gaza Strip as much as possible, and reducing pressure from the international community, even if it means further aggravating its violations of international law.

Since October 7, no foreign journalist has been able to freely enter the Gaza Strip, except for a CNN journalist who entered with an Emirati NGO via Egyptian territory. In January, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a request from the Foreign Press Association for free access to Gaza, on the pretext that it could endanger its military. Only a handful of journalists taken on board by the Israeli army, under strict control, have been able to access Gaza territory: "Since the morning of October 7, the Israeli army has been trying to impose a media blackout on the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. It's as simple and as violent as that," explains Jonathan Dagher, head of RSF's Middle East desk.

An opinion shared by Wilson Fache, journalist and former correspondent in the occupied territories: "It's unique in the world. We talk about it a lot among ourselves, among journalists who cover Israel and Palestine. We are quite shocked by this media blockade, which is without equivalent. It's really a strategy, I think, that was thought out from start to finish to really, really limit our coverage."

Media blockade

For the past year, foreign journalists have been forced to work exclusively remotely, interacting with residents and journalists present in the Gaza Strip.

Wilson Fache continues: "We were able to provide very broad coverage of the October 7 massacre, and it was necessary given the scale of the attack. The Israeli authorities invited us to do so, there were no restrictions. Subsequently, for the Gaza Strip, we would have liked to be able to cover the situation as much and go there, but we are prevented from doing so." At the same time, the Israeli authorities have therefore facilitated and directed access to information on the Hamas attack of October 7 for journalists, provided that it remains within the framework of the investigation and the story defined by the army services. This has in fact created a huge double standard in access to information. For Israel, the stakes are enormous: "The Israeli state knows that Western media are perceived as "more reliable". And even if this is unfounded, if it allowed access to these media, the coverage of the information would be both more complete and more credible in Western opinion. If the major networks could cover and complement the work of Palestinian journalists on the ground, Israeli propaganda would be completely undermined, public pressure would be even stronger, and governments would be required to act,” explains Yanis Mhamdi, a journalist for Blast.

While the Israeli state limits access to information, it must nevertheless deal with the work of Gazan journalists since the beginning of the war, witnesses to the genocide that is taking place behind closed doors.

Mohannad is one of them, followed by several hundred thousand people on social networks. Like many Palestinian journalists, his number of subscribers has exploded since October. He notes that “the Israelis are trying to delegitimize journalists and their information that bears witness to the reality in Gaza, but also their platforms by accusing them of being affiliated with Hamas. » When Géraldine Woessner, editor-in-chief of Le Point, states that "there are no Palestinian journalists", she is echoing this strategy that seeks to silence the Palestinians and make the narrative constructed by the Israeli authorities more audible.

A strategy "necessary on the Israeli side to achieve their goal of discrediting the words of these journalists and therefore questioning their reliability and accusing them truly without foundation, without proof, of being propagandists for Hamas", insists Jonathan Dagher.

Journalists in danger under Israeli fire

Beyond these accusations, Palestinian reporters must face an extremely difficult situation on the ground. The impunity enjoyed by Israel endangers all the inhabitants of the enclave, including journalists. They must simultaneously try to stay alive, worry about the safety of their loved ones and try to continue working in terrible conditions.

“We have difficulty moving from one place to another due to the danger, the bombings and the lack of transportation. We have difficulty charging cameras and mobile phones and accessing the internet to download the documents and scenes we film,” says Mohannad.

Mohamed, also a Palestinian journalist, also attests to the problems they face: “We face many difficulties in our work, in addition to the lack of equipment and frequent internet cuts, we face the targeting of our work buildings. We have no protection for our personal safety and that of the places where we are.”

In 2021, the Israeli army had already destroyed a building in Gaza that housed the American agency Associated Press and the news channel Al-Jazeera. According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, nearly seventy media infrastructures, including radio stations, press agencies and training centers, have been partially or completely destroyed since the beginning of the conflict.

This is also what the Gaza Project investigation, coordinated by Forbidden Stories, demonstrates. Fifty journalists from thirteen media outlets investigated the deaths of journalists in Gaza. While the collective was obviously unable to go to Gaza because of the blockade, they analyzed thousands of hours of images and sounds sent from the Palestinian enclave. The investigation shows that in its war against freedom of information, Israel does not hesitate to destroy press infrastructures. This is particularly the case of the AFP offices, destroyed on November 12 by an Israeli strike. Although the offices were empty, the journalists had installed a camera there that filmed Gaza and broadcast the video feed 24/7.

When Jonathan Dagher addresses this subject, he explains that "everything is done to stifle journalism in Gaza to prevent information and images from coming out and the main tool for this is violence: journalists are killed, journalists are injured, journalists cannot come in, cannot go out, they cannot go to the office." The assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh, killed on May 11, 2022 by the Israeli army while she was covering a raid in the West Bank, opened a breach: that of impunity for crimes committed against Palestinian journalism. Never have so many journalists died in such a short time. To date, at least 106 Palestinian journalists from Gaza have been killed. Through the project "The Faces of Carnage", the Mediapart editorial team wanted to reconstruct their faces "so that they are remembered, not only by their number, but also by their name, their face, their destiny." Each of them was a voice for the people of Gaza.

Even more serious, Reporters Without Borders has collected evidence that suggests that some of these journalists were victims of intentional killings. “Of the 100 journalists killed, we have evidence that at least 27 were killed even though Israel knew they were journalists and were identifiable as such,” continues Jonathan Dagher. “We have evidence that shows a strong likelihood of targeting, and we call on the ICC to investigate these war crimes.” The Forbidden Stories investigation also supports the hypothesis that the Israeli army targeted journalists.

Among the journalists killed named in the complaint are Mustapha Thuraya and Hamza al-Dahdouh, two freelance reporters under contract with Al Jazeera. They were killed on January 7, 2024, in an Israeli drone strike targeting their vehicle while they were working in Rafah. On January 10, the Israeli military issued a statement acknowledging that “an Israeli aircraft led by troops targeted the operators of a drone that threatened the Israeli military,” referring to the drone operated by Mustapha Thuraya. However, the Washington Post published the footage recorded by the journalist’s drone, revealing that it contained only journalistic content and no military equipment.

In Israel, Censorship and Denial

This lack of information about the Gaza Strip also has an impact on the other side of the wall that encloses Gazans. Efraim Davidi, a communist activist and editor-in-chief of the communist weekly Zo Haderech (“This is the Way”), explains that within Israeli society “the computer coverage of the events in Gaza is very weak, outside of the communist press and a few media outlets.”

Nitzan Perelman, a specialist in Israeli society, supports these statements: “In the mainstream media, these images do not appear at all, but it does not date from October 7 of the current war, it is usual. We do not see humanizing images of the Palestinians, we do not see images of hungry children, the only images are those of destruction that show the army’s objectives.”

Within Israeli society, very few Israelis inquire about the army’s atrocities in Gaza. "Israelis hear what is happening around the world, but they retort: 'they don't understand what we are going through' or 'these are lies'" says Nitzan. "We must never forget that for Israelis, the army is the most moral in the world, it is a deep belief linked on the one hand to the perception of the Jewish religion and on the other hand to the insistence on the moral character of Zionism."

In 2023, according to the Israeli media +972, 613 articles from Israeli media were censored and 2,700 articles were partially censored, an average of nine censored articles per day. Faced with this censorship, the daily Haaretz decided to make the banned productions visible by publishing in its newspaper a censored article by blacking out the relevant passages.

Beyond Israeli society on which the government can impose a lock by banning certain media, societies civilians around the world are able to see part of what is happening in Gaza thanks to the courageous work of Palestinian journalists, but also thanks to the digital revolution that allows all Palestinians to be able to film and broadcast their images - not to mention the videos shot by Israeli soldiers themselves. "Of course Israel wants to control the information, they banned Al-Jazeera, it was a source of information for many Israelis and for the Palestinian population living in Israel, continues Efraim Davidi. But we can continue to watch on YouTube, we see the videos from Gaza thanks to social networks, but only us. They are not broadcast on a large scale."

But the attacks on freedom of the press do not stop there since the Israeli army also carried out an operation in the offices of Al-Jazeera in Ramallah, on September 22, and ordered the closure of the premises, citing "the fight against terrorism".

Israel against the shocking images of Gaza

The war in Gaza is being described as "the first genocide in which the victims live-stream their own destruction". In an ultra-connected world, Israel, despite its efforts, cannot block and control all information.

"Their only goal is to make us capitulate... But we show the true picture of their massacres and we continue to cover the events in spite of everything, it is our duty," explains Sami, a press photographer from Gaza. An opinion shared by his colleague Mohannad: "We continue because we want to show the suffering that our people are facing to get a message across." For their French colleague, Yanis Mhamdi: "The Palestinians have understood that in the face of the ordeals they endure, video is their best weapon. In fact, it is their means of fighting against Israel and warning the world. That is why unfortunately, we end up with terrible images, like that of a man carrying his decapitated baby filmed with a mobile phone. He does it because it is his only weapon to show the world the reality of their suffering and to tell the world: "Look, look at what Israel is doing in Gaza." »

Faced with these images that move the world, Israel is left with the usual talking points, repeated war after war. In 1996, the Israeli army had already bombed a refugee camp on the outskirts of Canna, in southern Lebanon, killing more than a hundred people, and already at the time, an amateur video filmed by a Blue Helmet had proven that the Israeli statements were false. Ten years later, while the city was still healing its wounds, Israel committed a second massacre by bombing a building in the village, killing 28 people, including 16 children. Already at the time, Israeli leaders had claimed that the civilians were “human shields,” then that these civilians had been informed by leaflets dropped by air and that they should have left. Dan Gillerman, Israeli ambassador to the UN, had stated: “The bullets are Israeli, but the responsibility is Lebanese.” When it fails to control the narrative and block information, Israel always uses the same language ad nauseam…

The Israeli army is fully aware of the weight that these images have on international opinion. For example, an Israeli officer admitted that it no longer uses white phosphorus because the consequences of this extremely corrosive product gave terrible images. Faced with the proliferation of published content, Israel and its relays have one last card to play in their strategy: to make people believe that these images are false or that they are misinterpreted.

This strategy is not new. On September 30, 2000, the death of Mohammed Al Dura, a young boy hit by Israeli gunfire during an exchange of fire in Gaza, was filmed by journalist Charles Enderlin. "There was a lot of harassment, it started in France, from the right wing of the Jewish community. I was even awarded a Goebbels Prize for disinformation... In Israel, it came mainly from French speakers, says the France Télévisions correspondent. The government tried to accuse me of manipulation, but without daring to go to trial, which they did not want because they knew what the outcome would be: confirmation that Mohammed al Dura was killed by Israeli gunfire." he recalls today.

This event became the starting point for a strategy summarized by the term "Pallywood" and since October "Gazawood", a contraction of "Palestine", "Gaza" and "Hollywood". In short: images that offend sensibilities can only be false, because the Israeli army is a moral army. This ironic term allows us to cast doubt on all accusations of crimes committed by the Israeli army. For example, Israel is said to have secretly investigated whether the family of the teenager Ahed Tamimi was a real family or whether it was made up of actors…

Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, accusations of staging have multiplied. Yair Netanyahu, the son of the Israeli Prime Minister, published a video showing “bodies” under a white shroud moving during a funeral, with this comment: “Pallywood, look at the Palestinian victims in Gaza filmed accidentally”, implying that those who were presented as dead were in fact very much alive. But the only fake news was its publication, since the video actually showed a protest by Egyptian students from Al-Azhar University, the video of which had been posted in October 2013 on YouTube.

The multiplication of these accusations thus completes the Israeli strategy: to defame the oppressed, delegitimize their struggles and divert the world’s gaze from the violence of the oppressor. Despite this game of deception, the horrific images of Gaza continue to shock, far exceeding the threshold of acceptability of “traditional wars”. And despite the veils woven to conceal Israeli crimes, the ghosts of Gaza haunt our eyes and our thoughts.