Greg Bouwer
IINZ
The brutal murders of Israeli embassy staff Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim – slain by a pro-Palestinian extremist – are not isolated incidents. They are the tragic consequence of a culture of incitement, where anti-Israel hatred is normalised, excused, and even celebrated. And it’s time for the media to acknowledge their role in fuelling this hatred.
For 19 months, the chant “Globalise the Intifada” has echoed across Western campuses and protest rallies. It is not a slogan of peace. It is a call to replicate a violent uprising beyond Israel’s borders. It is an incitement to bloodshed, and the media’s uncritical repetition of it – without scrutiny or context – has helped mainstream what should be morally unthinkable.
When you repeat slogans like “Globalise the Intifada”, you are inciting violence against Israelis and Jews around the world.
The danger of incitement is no abstraction. It became tragically real when a virulent antisemite – shouting “Free Palestine” – gunned down a young Israeli couple in cold blood outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC.
This was not a ‘random’ or ‘isolated’ act. It was the logical endpoint of months of unchallenged propaganda, where the line between criticism of the State of Israel and antisemitism has been deliberately blurred, and where mainstream media have become unwitting – or at times willing – participants in the process.
Consider the now-discredited claim that 14,000 babies were killed in Gaza – an inflammatory and baseless figure initially circulated by a UN official and repeated uncritically by major media outlets around the world. The claim has since been walked back, but the damage is done. The retraction, when it came, was barely a whisper compared to the roar of the original headline.
This is not simply a matter of journalistic oversight. It is complicity. The media’s obsession with sensationalist narratives and double standards in reporting on Israel have created a moral fog in which terror can be rationalised, and Jews around the world are left increasingly vulnerable.
The victims in these recent attacks were not soldiers or politicians. They were civilians – representatives of a sovereign state, gunned down for who they were. If any other ethnic or national group were targeted in this way, there would be global outrage. Instead, we are offered euphemisms, evasions, and editorial silence.
The media have a responsibility – not just to report, but to uphold truth. To give equal weight to corrections as they do to clickbait headlines. To interrogate incendiary rhetoric rather than amplify it. And to treat Jewish lives with the same dignity afforded to others.
This is not about silencing criticism of Israeli policy. It is about recognising when that criticism becomes a smokescreen for hate – and understanding that the words we use can, and do, lead to violence.
Until mainstream media confront their role in this ecosystem of incitement, the bloodshed will continue – and so too will their culpability.
This article was originally published by the Israel Institute of New Zealand.
