By Andrea Tucci,
Since the war began, the Israeli media found itself at a critical juncture, navigating the trauma of a nation that was shaken by unprecedented violence and quickly retreated into a deeply-entrenched perception of historical victimhood. News broadcasters responded to this national trauma, by slipping further into tight grip of state-sanctioned propaganda.
As days of brutal violence turned into months, the Israeli media amplifying state narratives, and marginalizing any critical coverage of Israel’s brutality.
The Israel’s media landscape, has always been subservient to the political and military establishment, has come under relentless pressure from Benjamin Netanyahu over the last decade; Commercial media outlets, more interested in maintaining viewers than challenging power, have fallen prey to Netanyahu’s strategy of coercion, self-censorship, and economic pressure.
Recent years have also seen the rapid rise of Channel 14 that has openly aligned itself with Netanyahu, and is now challenging the long dominance of Channel 12.
Netanyahu’s adept use of propaganda outlets like Channel 14, as well as social media, has helped him mold a devoted following that defends and bolsters him against domestic and international pressure.
Even before the 7th of October, the Israeli media , whether public or private, on television, the radio, or the internet was weakened and beleaguered following more than a decade of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s persistent struggle to control it. While some media outlets had simply become a tool in Netanyahu’s propaganda war, others gradually submitted to his pressure, platforming the prime minister’s allies and talking points in their broadcasts.
In the past decade, Netanyahu has tried to shut down Channel 10 and meticulously placed his supporters in every single possible Israeli outlet, from Channel 12 and Israeli Army Radio to i24 and KAN channel.
And yet, we cannot place all of the blame on the prime minister. Netanyahu is operating in a country where most of the media outlets are privately-owned and where the public is moving to the right. The Channels can’t sell ads if they don’t have an audience, and they can’t keep their audience if they show them things that anger them.
But today no discussion of the Israeli media is complete without talking about Channel 14.
The Channel was born like a small station dedicated to providing religious content that lacked a news broadcasting license. But gradually, Netanyahu and his allies granted a license to broadcast news and today became the full-blown his propaganda.
The channel is owned by the son of a Russian oligarch ( Yitzchak Mirilashvili is an Israeli entrepreneur, co-founder of VK -Vkontakte, Russia’s largest social network) who enjoys close ties to Netanyahu, and has connections to Vladimir Putin and other shady figures.
Like the entire media apparatus that Netanyahu has built which is often nicknamed the “poison machine”, Channel 14 is a propaganda tool. It is seen as fun channel that it provides entertainment for the masses, appealing to the public’s desire for revenge following October 7. Commentators who appear on “The Patriots,” the station’s flagship talk show hosted by Yinon Magal, regularly call for genocide and extermination of the Palestinians.
One thing is certainly sure most the Israeli media don’t show the public what the army is doing to Palestinians in Gaza ,don’t cover damaged roads from an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin, don’t track Israeli human rights violations in the West Bank, they don’t show any headlines on Gaza’s Health Ministry announcing that 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, or any human stories of Palestinians under Israeli bombardment.
The entirety of Israeli society has many years of experience in ignoring their crimes against the Palestinians. Whether it’s the Nakba, which is a completely taboo subject, or the ongoing military occupation over millions of people.
The media and the viewership are implicated by entering into a kind of pact of silence. The public doesn’t want to see, so the media won’t talk about it.
These psychological mechanisms were already so ingrained that when October 7 happened, they sprang into action and only became more powerful.
What we have seen over the last year is the result of a decades long process of educating both journalists and viewers that there are things that: “we simply don’t talk about and don’t show on the news”. Most of the journalists working at these mainstream outlets know what is happening, but they don’t want to alienate their viewers for fear of losing ratings.
It seems that whenever you turn on any of these news channels, they are constantly reliving the horrors of October 7 and puts Israeli Jews back in the position of the historical victim and propaganda we have seen on the news over the last year to reinforces and justifies state violence against Palestinians: To do anything necessary to annihilate those who are being portrayed as an “absolute evil”.
The Israeli communications minister issue the so- called “Al Jazzera Low” ( through which the Al jazzera offices were shut down in Israel and Ramallah ). This law prevent any foreign news network from operating in Israel because it harms the national morale.
What the Israeli public doesn’t understand is that next in line will be BBC Arabic, Sky News Arabic, and CNN. After that, they’re going to come for Haaretz ,+972, Channel 12, and most probably many others if they do not align with the “pact of silence“.
