The media are messing with our heads – even about the 'hostages'

The media aren’t failing us. Journalism is not what the media are there to do. They are propagandists for their governments. And their governments are enabling a genocide

Over on social media, @zei_squirrel has another of his excellent threads on the western media’s use of deceptive language to manipulate how readers think about what has been unfolding in Gaza over the past year.

This time he is incensed by the way the Associated Press agency, or AP, stresses in its reporting a supposed failure to distinguish between Palestinian “militants” and “civilians” in Gaza’s official death toll – by any reckoning, a massive undercount – to insinuate the Israeli talking-point that most of the dead in Gaza are likely to be “evil Hamas”.

He rightly refers to this as genocide-laundering.

But I want to address a parallel point about the language used by western media he doesn’t raise here, but that is equally misleading and compounds the very problem he’s examining.

The double standard should be glaring. While AP and other outlets are keen to highlight a distinction between civilians and militants among Palestinian casualties to suggest that a significant proportion of the dead are actually militants, they do the exact reverse when reporting on the Israelis taken into Gaza by Hamas during its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

That point is illustrated by this paragraph, taken from @zei_squirrel’s post:

Hamas, once again, is cited as having "abducted" 250 Israelis on October 7. Those Israelis are always described as "hostages". But we know a significant proportion of them were actually soldiers – soldiers seized that day from military bases that have been enforcing a brutal occupation and 17-year medieval-style siege on Gaza. None of those soldiers were "abucted". They were "captured".

No one in the media has made the slightest effort to distinguish in the coverage between Israeli civilians seized that day, and Israeli soldiers. All the Israelis taken into Gaza on October 7 have been automatically accorded civilian status through the use of the word “abducted”, even though we know that is not true – not by a long stretch.

Similarly, no effort has been made to explain that the Israelis released by Hamas were civilians, in contrast to many of those who are still held in Gaza – presumably because Hamas has preferred to use soldiers as its main bargaining chips in negotiations rather than civilians.

What is Hamas negotiating for, beyond a ceasefire? For the return of many thousands of Palestinians who truly have been abducted – dragged off into Israeli torture camps like Sde Teiman.

(Remember, Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories has been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice, the world's highest court. In international law, Israel is the undoubted aggressor. Hamas didn't "start it" on October 7. Israel has been "starting it" for decades with its illegal occupation. The judges recognised that the Palestinians have a legal right to resist their occupation through violence to liberate themselves. Yes, when Hamas targets Israeli civilians, it is committing a war crime. But Israel, as the indisputable aggressor, is no position to act as any kind of law enforcer in the territories it is illegally occupying.)

So why is the media failing to note the difference between "abducted" Israeli civilians and "captured" Israeli soldiers in its reporting? Because language strongly shapes how we feel emotionally about news events.

If most of the remaining Israelis in Gaza are actually soldiers, not civilians, western publics might feel even less receptive to the argument that the mass slaughter of Palestinians, the erasure of their homes and infrastructure, and their starvation is necessary to secure the Israelis’ return. They might insist instead that their governments stop arming Israel’s genocide and impose a ceasefire.

Which is precisely what Israel doesn't want. It is precisely what western governments don't want. And so it is precisely what the western media don't want.

That is why the media make no effort to find out how many of the Israelis in Gaza are, in fact, soldiers. Even the suggestion that they have a duty to find out would outrage them. They would regard it as justifying "terrorism". 

So while the media insist on making a distinction between Palestinian civilians and militants, between women and children, on one side, and men on the other (as though every man in Gaza is a combatant and therefore a legitimate target), they keep referring to all Israelis held in Gaza as "abducted", as civilians.

The media aren’t failing us. This is what they are there to do. They are not journalists. They are propagandists for their governments. And their governments are enabling a genocide.

[Many thanks to Matthew Alford for the audio reading of this article.]

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