1- The war of “Israel - Hamas”?

On 7 October at noon, following the attack by the Hamas armed group and four other groups on the Israeli military and civilians, the Israeli Government declared war, thousands of international media repeated Netanyahu's well-chosen idea: Israel's war against Hamas begins. This has been his position in relation to information about horrors that would aggravate the world – about the title in the newspapers, on television on the labels, in the presentation of news on the radio…. From the New York Times to the Basque Journal, from EiTB to Le Monde.

To put it that way, and not, for example, the Israel war against Palestine or the Israel war against Gaza, is an important editorial decision. Hamas is a political movement governed in Gaza. In command of Israel is the Likud party, along with the right end. The antithesis of this label would be the Likud-Gaza war or Likud-Palestine war, unthinkable in the media we are analyzing. The contextualization of the Israeli offensive in the battle of Israel removes Palestine from the equation, with which the historical context and the political conflict disappear from the same location; on the other hand, everything is considered as if the speech of the Israeli Government had begun on 7 October at a boiling point; and, finally, with this formula, Likud and the subsequent Israeli government separate from the people. So, needless to say, the bombings of Israel are legitimised.

Given that Israel is dying much more civilians than Sixteen activists, including over 4,000 children, and that Israel is continuing to attack hospitals, schools and refugee camps, it is more true to the truth, for example, the formula used by Atef Abu Saif in the “Gazan Journal” of the Berria:War on Gaza. We could also say the war in Israel against Gaza.

2- Who bombed them?

In a networked search, it can be said that the global media can be divided into two large groups: the bombers who mention the authorship of Israel and, hiding this detail, those who decide not to bring relevant information to the foreground. This second group covers a large part of the media that are presented internationally as prestigious.

“Who but?”, they ask the BBC on social media dozens of times, in English “By whom?” Here is an example – we will present the titles translated into the Basque language to facilitate reading, clicking on the links you can see the originals –: Dozens of deaths in the explosion of a refugee camp in northern Gaza. Analyzing the headline, two decisions made by the journalist stand out: on the one hand, it says “explosion”, not “bombing”, and on the other, it does not specify who has thrown the device and killed people. More examples. Europe Press: At least 29 journalists have been killed in the war between Israel and Hamas. O Le Monde: Follow the images of the bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp. Or the New York Times: A minimum of 24 deaths in attack on a school run by the UN.

“Is it a mysterious murder? Who has done that? ! Is it unknown? User Ahmed Leithy replies to CNN with the following title: A Palestinian American family mourns the death of 42 members in Gaza in one day. It is a strategy to conceal or soften the uncomfortable truth of some media, when Israel is dying thousands of civilians, and is already drawing attention to the eyes of many people.

Below, the protest of entrepreneurs at the headquarters of the North American television right chain Fox News.

3- Give credibility to the lie

It is very repetitive and we have seen it many times in the Basque Country. Faced with a possible scandal, institutional decision-makers use lying as a political strategy with a clear objective: to alleviate the first media coup in public opinion. This has happened every time the Zubieta incinerator has polluted the adjacent regatta or when the works of the San Sebastian metro have caused a hole in the street or cracks in a house, to mention two cases. The authorities clearly have to do it: deny it all. “That pollution doesn’t come from the incinerator, you have to investigate,” or “that hole in the ground has nothing to do with the works of the metro, you have to analyze it.” This means that the media act as if there were two versions, that the scandal was presented to the main headlines as a hypothesis or as if it could not be known what has happened. Then, the same thing always happens: yes, it is known that pollution leaked by the incinerator or that the hole was made by the works. Obviously, but the media attention for the second vote is usually focused on other issues and the media that were hypothesized rarely give as much importance as the media that gave the first information, so far fewer people are reached. Goal control. Such manipulative strategies deserve reflection and more journalistic courage so that they do not violate the right of citizens to receive truthful information.

The Israeli authorities are constantly lying, as we have seen many times in recent decades. On 17 November it became very clear when hundreds of civilians were bombed and massacred at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza. The Gaza authorities immediately accused an Israeli missile. Faced with the rebellion of international public opinion, the Israeli army disseminated false evidence and videos manipulated to say that they did not throw that missile and that the cause was a rocket diverted from the Palestinian resistance. Even though this hypothesis had no head or leg – first, because the Palestinians have no weapons to cause such destruction and Israel had been destroying all buildings with missiles for days – most media reported as a question or without citing authorship. “Israel has bombed the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza” instead of saying clearly, many called it this way: El Correo: The bombing of a Gaza hospital causes a bloodbath with “hundreds of deaths” or the New York Times: Knowledge of the explosion at the Gaza hospital. A few days later, an Al Jazeera study showed that it was by no means a Palestinian rocket, of course, that it was launched at the hospital and today there is no doubt that Israel attacks the hospitals, which have come inside to shoot patients with snipers, denounced by Doctors Without Borders.

For example, when Israel bombed civilian ambulances and killed 13 people on 3 November, without any evidence, they said that in the ambulances there were members of hidden Sixteen. Although doctors at the hospital immediately denied it, many media outlets published Israeli propaganda to justify war crimes without questioning this hypothesis. For example, La Voz de Galicia published: Hamas, one of the most read in India, tried to move with civilians along the Rafah pass: Israel, together with the hospital in Gaza, ambulance attacks the 'sixteen militants', also attacking a school, 35 dead. In these headlines, the version of one of the sides is considered valid. The same was true of reports that under Al-Shifa hospital was Hamas headquarters. Without providing any evidence, the hypothesis has been accepted – and the dissemination of a video simulator by the Israeli army – by many media throughout the world. However, following the invasion of the hospital, at the time we sent this magazine to the press, Israel has not yet released some manipulated videos that have been publicly denounced by the BBC and CNN. The information “everything is Hamas”, based on Israeli propaganda, seeks to make the public feel good about bombing ambulances or hospitals, despite prohibiting the Geneva conventions.

Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish scholar from the United States, is very angry at the New York Times' coverage of Hamas's alleged al-Shifa residence. On social media, he reminds them that newspaper director Der Sturmer, Julius Streicher, was hanged at Nuremberg for Nazi crimes, and asks whether the media and journalists who have whitewashed the attack on al-Shifa are not responsible for the children killed in their incubators.

Below, a protest by dozens of people at NYTimes headquarters, criticizing the work being done with the massacre in Gaza.

4- The right to defend who?

In the last two years, the authorities and the media have talked a lot about the right of peoples to defend themselves. In 2022 they talked about Ukraine’s right to defend itself against the Russian invasion. On this occasion too, the hegemonic media and the authorities of the various governments, including Iñigo Urkullu, have spoken about the right to defence. But not on the right of Palestine to respond to the apartheid situation of Israel as a colonizing state for 75 years. The right to self-defence, to whom and to Israel attribute the blocks led by the US and the EU. Despite witnessing a ruthless attack lasting for several weeks, both speak as if the massacre of Sixteen against the military and civilians justified everything, including war crimes, genocide and ethnic cleansing.

On 16 November, six weeks after the last attack, EU Foreign Affairs and Security Representative Josep Borrell said: “The EU strongly condemns Hamas’s actions and does not doubt Israel’s right to defend itself.” He then asks Israel, in other words, not to make war crimes so visible, because its allies are becoming more and more uncomfortable.

5- Hamas “terrorist organization”

Hamas is a political party that runs in Gaza and won its elections in 2006. It has an armed arm – the al-Qassam brigade – like many other Palestinian parties, including Fatahk. As Manu Levin explained in the podcast La Base, which usually deals with these issues in an excellent way, Hamas is not on terrorist lists around the world. They have it. Israel, USA, EU, Japan, Canada, Paraguay, Australia, Egypt or Paraguay. It is not defined as terrorist by: Switzerland, Norway, Turkey, Brazil, China and Russia, to name a few.

Therefore, the systematic definition of Hamas as a terrorist organisation is not at least something that can be presented as objective data worldwide, but an ideological approach aligned with some countries. With Hamas and the Palestinian resistance always presented as a terrorist, Israel has a moral advantage in this massacre, so Israel’s attacks are implicitly presented as anti-terrorist actions. They will be left to the shame of this trade, how they have questioned in various Western media Palestinian relatives killed by Israeli bombings, among others. "Do you condemn Hamas terrorism? ". You'll always be asked that question. The British Ambassador of Palestine replied on 8 October to the BBC interviewer. “How many times have there been war crimes in Israel? And do you start asking respondents to condemn this? I will reply: no. Stop asking the Palestinians to constantly condemn us.”

But let us dive into a dark concept of “terrorism” with profound political connotations. Can the kidnapping and murder of civilians be considered terrorism? That is how it is used. And therefore, why not kill civilians by bombing a hospital? Why has terrorism not left two million people without water, without electricity and without health services and committing war crimes every day? Israel, since its founding, has been a state using terrorist practices.

However, with the language used by Israel, it often points out that they bombard the “Hamas targets”, leaving behind the shattering of these attacks. Euronews: Israel has bombed hundreds of targets in Hamas yesterday. It is only one example that justifies the bombing.

The main media that rejects this policy in the West is the BBC, which seeks the label of impartiality, although, like objectivity, this is not possible, but to ask the Scottish independentists, and a few days ago it has been a source of controversy because the Israeli Government has directly criticised the members of Sixteen who do not call them “terrorists”. The BBC has defended its decision and brought to the forefront the words of John Simpson, a veteran international journalist: “Calling someone terrorist is choosing a side.”

6- General framework: war on terrorism

If Hamas is a terrorist, a profound approach is the Spanish state in Euskal Herria and George W. It's the same as EE.UU. used in Iraq: the war on terrorism. We know very well what that means. Also in Iraq: over a million people were killed on the excuse of weapons of mass destruction that never appeared there.

Missiles of different tons are thrown onto buildings, destroyed and killed by families living inside them are “surgical operations against Hamas.” However, it is a language of laundering attacks on the civilian population, which hides war crimes and disseminates Israeli army propaganda as a journalism: Country Holder: The Israeli army is spreading through Gaza after attacking 450 positions in Hamas. That day also killed dozens of people, including children.

The establishment of the framework as a war Israel Hamas allows the poor in scruples to connect the entire Palestinian people with terrorism. To give an extreme example, Israeli television Canal 14, by providing data on the invasion of Gaza – wounded and killed – used the label “dead terrorists” on the data of the dead Palestinians. The Palestinian journalist based in London, Ahmed Alnaouq, responded on social media: “This Israeli television states that 7,546 terrorists have been killed. I know fourteen of those terrorists, they were my nephews and were between 1 and 13 years old.”

7- People or numbers?

Of the thousands of Palestinian victims we know neither their name, nor what they did, nor anything. Much more is coming about the Israeli victims. For example, on 7 October and the following days Sixteen collected in the Western media stories of numerous hostages and civilian deaths. The case of the German Shani Louk is an example. The last cover of the American magazine Time is also a good example: Family and history of a person kidnapped by sixteen. There are no problems, humanizing civilian victims is a decent exercise. Another thing is that these media normally only act with the victims on one side. It is a strategy to try to create empathy, a way to present one side as “our” side, and the other not.

El País: In the Gaza War, a child dies every 10 minutes, according to estimates from Save The Children. Of the 9,000 victims, 4,000 have no name or history (here the link, then changed title). In the first part the journalist could have put live that Israel kills a child in Gaza every 10 minutes, but the second part still attracts more attention. These people had names and surnames and history. Another thing is that Western journalists don't investigate the usual and move it to our audiences.

Al Jazeera has created the Know Their Names section to show that Palestinians are not numbers. For these reasons, and by directly confronting Israeli propaganda, Qatar ' s media has become the world ' s leading information benchmark. What the accounts consist of, Israel has passed a new law to try to close Al Jaze, for the umpteenth time.

8- Dead vs. killed

The media in Euskera always use “dead” as usual, so this stagnation does not occur. In Spanish, however, death vs. murder, in French mourir vs. meurtre, in English to die and to kill or to murder have different meanings and, therefore, different connotations.

The newspaper El Mundo offers many examples in its archive to illustrate this section. For example, on 8 October, at the entrance you can read: Be killed by over 700 Israelis. Below, 413 Palestinians have been killed (killed).

Another example of the BBC, when Israel bombed the Jabalia refugee camp and caused hundreds of victims: Dozens of deaths in a refugee camp in northern Gaza. There were not dozens, but hundreds of deaths that day, they were civilians, Israel bombed the refugees, and it was not an explosion, but a bombing.

9- Can the situation be explained without mentioning Occupation and Apartheid?

For years many international actors have defined as Apartheid what Israel is doing in Palestine. Be it Amnesty International or UN Organization. In March 2022, the latter said: “The Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is an apartheid situation” and announced that it would assume the definition.

Apartheid was a political system established in South Africa, recognizing privileges to one of the two human groups living in the same State and discriminating against the other. Anyone who is somewhat informed of the Palestinian situation knows that this definition is fully implemented with what Israel is doing. However, we will only see articles that assume this definition in the main media. We'll always find that word in quotation marks in someone's mouth. The same is true of occupation. The latest offensive in Gaza is reported, not to mention, on the situation of occupation in Palestine, and what this is like on a daily basis.

10- Defenders of Palestine, anti-Semites?

The Israeli forces have provoked an interested bewilderment by mixing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

Anti-Semitism is a prejudice, hostility or discrimination against Jews, understood as a religious, ethnic or racial group. And the genocide being done in Palestine cannot be understood at all as discrimination against Jews, because they are Jews. This is demonstrated by the thousands of Jews living outside Israel who are mobilizing for Palestine.

The citizens who denounce the genocide in Gaza, the right, even the media right, are accused of having anti-Semites everywhere in the world. And today the sponsors of Israel, Le Pen (France), Abascal (Spain), Meloni (Italy)... always fascists and anti-Semites, including people who extol Hitler. It's the brand.