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This ‘shocking scene’ of a ‘chaotic hostage exchange’ is curiously lacking in some important details. The image does not include any armed members of Harakat al Muqawama al Islamiya (‘the Islamic Resistance Movement’, hereafter referred to by the better known acronym ‘Hamas’), or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) armed combatants, nor any of the 30 convicted terrorists – including Zechariah Zubeidi and Muhammad Abu Warda, who is responsible for the murder of 45 Israelis – that Israel agreed to release in exchange for the release of eight hostages held in Gaza, at all.
There are precisely zero of the eight hostages in the image. Not one of the 251 Israelis and foreign nationals, kidnapped in the course of Hamas’ brutal invasion into Israeli sovereign territory on October 7 2023, is pictured. Neither do we in fact see any of the actual shocking scenes of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad-Hamas handover of hostages to the Red Cross in Gaza in the image chosen to accompany the headline. Who has time to read beyond the headlines anyway, especially when the accompanying images begin to blend into one shocking, and of course it is actually shocking, picture of civilian misery and devastation in Gaza?
The Hamas-positive framing of this headline, with its false equivalence of hostages and convicted terrorists, is ensured with the editorial choice of the cherry-picked, and wholly inappropriate, image. The distorted narrative bias has been an almost constant terrorist erasing ‘Gazawashing’ media endeavor throughout the entire war. Take a moment to recall media reporting throughout the October 7 war, or even in the weeks preceding this exchange of prisoners for hostages, the ‘ceasefire negotiations’, alone. The media, outside of Israel, has consistently broadcast, and published, scenes of devastation in Gaza.
What are we shown on those rare occasions that the media purport to portray the Israeli experience of the war? Soldiers, or Tel Aviv protesters. Rarely, if at all, do we see the wholesale devastation of Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Re’im, the Nova music festival, or Route 232 littered with hundreds of burnt out and bullet riddled vehicles, and rocket shelters, the carnage wrought by Hamas, PIJ, and even Gazan civilians, let alone footage of any of the 6000 rockets fired from Gaza the morning of October 7 2023.
Hezbollah rocket, drone, and anti tank mortar fire from Lebanese territory, causing devastation, death, and displacement, to what is conservatively estimated to be 60 thousand Israelis, in the north of Israel since October 8 2023, has not saturated media coverage. Neither of the two large scale Islamic Republic Iran’s missile attacks against Israel have been constantly recycled images, despite the first being a historic event in the region as the first direct attack on Israel by the regime from its own soil. The images of the horrific, proudly self filmed, Hamas-led invasion which started the October 7 war have not been shown on an endless loop beyond the first 24 hours of reporting.
The media appear to have been erasing Hamas, their allies, and all of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s proxies from all seven fronts of this multifront war for the entirety of the war, bar those first 24 hours. Using the footage, and interviews, filmed by Hamas’ operatives, who are credited as though they are independent press reporters, the international media are playing a part on the eighth front of the war: the Hamas propaganda infowar.
The militarization of Gaza into a multidimensional battlefield, thus cynically, and strategically, maximizing civilian casualties and infrastructural devastation, is captured by Hamas-approved ‘press’, and on more than then one occasion staged, or intentionally misreported, as with the infamous Al Ahli Hospital PIJ rocket misfire. Media retractions of that misreporting were never going to be front page news, if they occurred at all. All of this is strategically fed to the world’s media to entrench the erasure of combatants in the public sphere.
The IDF appears not to be engaging any belligerents ever, at all. There are no Palestinian combatants, only civilian casualties. Hezbollah, who haven’t been seen militarizing south Lebanon and embedding themselves in civilian infrastructure by UNIFIL for the last 18 years, let alone by the world’s press for the last 15 months, made a media splash with the precision supply chain operation of ‘Grim Beeper’, which is widely regarded by military analysts as one of the most successful and pin-point-accurate targeting operations of its kind in the military history. Although you wouldn’t know that from most mainstream media reporting.
The Houthi pirates have been firing ballistic missiles successfully at Tel Aviv for the duration of the war, but what do we see in the media, and hear from ‘globalized intifada’ enthusiasts? ‘Yemen, Yemen, make us proud/Turn another ship around!’ Beyond anything else about these genocidal jihadis, whatever your opinion on the Yemeni civil war – presuming you have actually heard about the Yemeni civil war – their ongoing targeting of ships, disrupting all international shipping, in the Red Sea has actually contributed to the escalating cost of living, and widespread supply disruptions to a wide range of markets.
While it is still October 7 2023, in some way at least, both for Israelis and for most Jews, and will be until the security of the state is assured, and all the hostages are released, and as we deal with the appalling increase in antisemitism, with threats, and acts of violence targeting both Jews and Israelis wherever we may be, that’s not what we’re seeing reflected in media reporting. It appears that Hamas is not a belligerent in this war, and there are no combatants, patrons, allies, or supporters, in Gaza at all, nor anywhere else. Ever. Not really. Not even in New Zealand Immigration visa application questions.
This article was originally published by the Israel Institute of New Zealand.